The U.S. Census office acknowledges that it was one of its workers who wouldn’t take “no” for an answer, and recently hung out in a Dallas couple’s yard trying to get the woman to participate in a housing survey.
Sonia Platz said the worker went as far as to camp out in her yard as she waited for Platz to change her mind.
“She’s ringing the bell, knocking on the door. And I’m like, ‘I don’t want to participate,’” said Platz.
The East Dallas resident said it started with a series of three letters from the U.S. Census Bureau. A few days later after receiving the third later, a census worker showed up. Her husband verbally declined.
But a few days later, a different worker showed up at their home and would not leave according to Platz.
The U.S. Census has become a more intrusive operation in the Obama years. The Democratic Congress of 2007-2011 made the extensive “American Community Survey” — a very long and detailed version of the Census, sent only to some households in Census years — mandatory, rather than voluntary. Americans who are targeted for the ACS but don’t want to answer the long list of intrusive questions can be fined for refusing. Republicans want to change that, but the Obama administration favors the intrusive questionnaire, and the president is unlikely to agree to make it voluntary again.
There have also been some serious concerns about Census operations in recent years. Evidence indicates that the Census Bureau was behind “creative” jobless numbers published just before the 2012 election. The Bureau changed its methods for surveying health insurance coverage so dramatically in 2014 that it will probably be impossible to determine the effects of the Obamacare changes on coverage patterns. That will allow the Obama administration to make whatever claims it wants, without inconvenient government data to contradict its narrative.
But being in the tank for the Obama political narrative does seem to go with hounding the citizens. Sonia Platz certainly felt hounded when the Census worker wouldn’t leave her property.
The census worker sat on the bumper of her van for the next 30 minutes. Sonia said the worker would only get up from the back of her van every few minutes to see if she had changed her mind about taking the housing survey.
“Some people were stunned. Some people couldn’t believe it. They were kind of shocked like, ‘that can’t be a true government census bureau worker,’” said Platz.
The Census Bureau confirmed that it was one of their workers, however.
A supervisor confirmed more than 100 other workers are out in the area conducting the same work. The regional office said employees are encouraged to be “pleasantly persistent” and never take “no” for an answer at first. …
The U.S. Census Bureau said anyone who feels they are being visited too frequently can request to have their address removed from the list.
Being pestered at your door every few minutes does seem to qualify as “too frequently.”
