this post was submitted on 22 Jan 2024
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What is census? And who's sending it?
(asks non usa-an)
If your serious, it's something we do every few years to see how many people live in the US (like how many people live at your house), what race and gender you all are, income and that sort of thing. Basically it just gives the government a general idea of how many people live in the US, whether or not they are citizens and other social and economic shit. You fill them out anonymously and it only effects general population reports and stuff, it doesn't really effect you personally. It's pretty much only used for statistical purposes.
I think the MDHS one is Mississippi child support and this "sovereign citizen" is a deadbeat parent (surprise).
Thank You for explanation
Out of curiosity, does your country not have a census? I would have guessed every country does to have accurate information about their populace.
In my hellscape there are three sources of information about who lives in country
Participating in census is not mandatory here. If you make census mandatory it will probably be no better than existing beaurocracy and defeats purpose of getting on-ground truth.
Sorry, yes it has every 10 years, it's just english is not my native langusge and I never used(heard/saw) census so I was confused.
No that was digitalized like twenty years ago.
How? Is it China? I can't imagine real digitalized census without China level of surveillance.
I, uh, happen to be an expert in censuses.
The US of course tries to get everyone to respond, and sends people out to follow up with people who don't respond, such as this sovereign citizen in the original post. (The picture is of the 2020 Census envelope and as such is ~4 years old, by the way.)
Some European countries do an administrative records census, wherein they know who is in the country based on passport control, birth and death records, and so on. These censuses have the (admitted) flaw that someone who is in the country illegally would almost certainly not be counted, but on the flip side they are MUCH cheaper and faster than the US-style census. It's basically just running an SQL query on the database.
Other countries do a mix of the two. Even the US uses administrative records sometimes, if good data is available, and they can't get a response another way.
The US's situation is more complex than many countries, because driver's licenses (which serve as IDs) are issued by the individual states, not the federal government, and relatively few Americans ever get a passport. So, the closest things to a "master list" of people in the US that the government has are things like IRS and Social Security records - but those have flaws, too - for example, they don't count legal visitors.
I do not know what China et al do to complete their censuses.
Copy-pasta from my another comment:
In my hellscape there are three main sources of information about who lives in country
Participating in census is not mandatory here. If you make census mandatory it will probably be no better than existing beaurocracy and defeats purpose of getting on-ground truth.
I mean for govt to know how much each ring of hell is polulated and who in fact lives there instead of just registered needs either to knock on the door or spy on everyone. Not that I know what China does for their censuses.