These days, you can do pretty much anything online, except for one: submit your U.S. census forms. A new website, UnofficialCensus.org, aims to change that, partially by “sham[ing] the U.S. Census Office for not having a method of online submission.” The website asks the same questions as the 2010 U.S. Census, but allows users to submit their answers online and see real-time statistics (as of April 1, 2010). The website also includes a petition urging the U.S. Census Office “to make an online submission option a higher priority.”[%comments]
One Thing You Still Can't Do Online
TAGS: census
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If the online data entered was printable and submittable it would at least be worth doing.
More bothersome is the letter that preceded the census’s arrival informing the public of the imminent arrival of the census. That mailing was a great use of taxpayer money!
Stephanie – “Less time than it would take for me to turn on my machine”?
The machine should never be off!
If the census was available online they would not be able to subsidize the postal service by sending out both the census form along with the letter saying that you will soon be receiving a census form.
The census us meant to measure, as accurately as possible, the number of people that live here, with “living here” meaning those with home addresses.
An online option? What you seem to fail to recognize and take into account is that fact that not everyone that lives here has internet access. What is the estimate of households with internet access, somewhere around 50%?
Now, tell us this: if the only option was to undertake the census effort through an online mechanism, would this method lead to an equal or more accurate measure of the population? Hardly.
If anything, adding an online option would only increase costs without a proportionately larger benefit since it only benefits those with internet access (and not 100% of this group will use the online method).
Those without internet access would reply by mail, which is the same as they’re doing now. Those with internet access will reply by mail or online.
If anything, the Census Office is making a prudent and fiscally responsible decision. What is the additional financial cost of developing such a web site? What is the additional financial cost of protecting this information, preventing fraud, preventing duplicate responses, etc.?
So where’s the additional benefit of your original complaint? Just sounds like a lot of self-indulgence.
I don’t understand the objections to online filing of census forms. We can file taxes online–or via snail mail–and to my knowledge the IRS hasn’t gotten hacked recently… It seems like the IRS is a lot more high stakes than Census info because there are actual bank transfer #s all over the tax forms.
Does anyone know anything about Census Digitus, the “nonpartisan initiative” that claims to be behind this, but has no Web presence I can identify? And, aside from Dreamhost’s street address, no substantive WHOIS information on the unofficialcensus.org domain (or registrations of any censusdigitus domains). Despite the many disclaimers, this looks to me like an information collection scam.
I got a letter from the cencus bureau that said I would get another letter in 2 weeks. thats it. dumbest thing I have ever seen. another laughing stock of a government program. what is the point of the census anyway? I know there are a lot of people in cities, most of which wont return the form anyway. complete waste of time.