My life is not the government’s business!

I object to the 2020 census questionnaire. I have no intention of answering their list of questions other than telling the government how many people live in my house and their names. They actually already know that information since it is required information on annual income tax filings. Actually the filing provides some information that is not included in the census questionnaire like social security number and birth date.

The questionnaire asks my race or national origin (White/Irish, White/Lebanese, White/your family’s origin. Black/your family’s origin, American Indian/your tribe, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Chamorro (the indigenous people of the Mariana Islands), Latin American/your family’s country of origin.

What is your relationship with the people living in your house? Are you married and is the person of the same sex or opposite sex?

Who owns your house? If is not your house do you live rent free? Is there a mortgage?

The problem is that the government already knows the answer to many of these questions because you most likely file an income tax return where you provide your social security number and the numbers for your children and spouse. If they want to know who owns your home and if there is a mortgage they can find the answers at the hall of records.

This census questionnaire is really an effort to obtain information about your personal life. For what purpose? I believe we have a government that wants to control our lives and our behavior.

The constitution of the United States directed a census every ten years to allocate members of the House of Representatives. That is the only purpose stated.

I went on-line to fill out the census form. I provided the names of the people living in the house and my phone number. The next on-line question was the inquiry about the ownership of my house. I tried to skip the question. The program would not permit me to do that. I exited the program.

On my census form it says, ‘Your response is required by law. … if you’re over 18 and refuse to answer all or part of the census, you can be fined up to $100. In practice, though, no one has been prosecuted for not filling out the census since 1970, according to a 2014 PolitiFact article.

If they knock on my door I will not tell them anything.