Census Mail -- Sorta

In my mail yesterday was a white envelope with black letters on the right side that said

DO NOT DESTROY
OFFICIAL DOCUMENT

Holy crap?  What official document?  Through a piece of cheap clear plastic I can read:

Census Document Registered To:


Mr. Barry Hollander
blah blah address blah

Holy crap?  The Census has already started?  Yeah, it's 2010, but no way they're far enough long to be sending me mail.

Look harder:

SPECIAL NOTICE: You have been selected to represent Republican voters in Georgia's 10th Congressional District.  Enclosed Please find documents registered in your name.

And larger:

DELIVER EXCLUSIVELY TO Mr. Barry Hollander

In other words, a Republican survey because, yes, I occasionally vote Republican so I'm on their list.  The survey asks how often I vote, what party I prefer, my age, and "from what media source do you regularly receive your political news?"  Bunch of choices here, but how they're grouped is fascinating.

• NBC/CBS/ABC are grouped together.  Okay, I can buy that.  The differences are subtle, but it's a perfectly good way to collapse your data.
  
• But CNN/MSNBC together?  That's just dumb, unless of course you believe on the part of CNN that a lack of a conservative bias equals a liberal bias.  The two are very unlike.
• Fox News.  Gets it's own special category.  Gee, wonder why?
• And a bunch of online stuff, like Facebook/MySpace (never mind how different they are), and Twitter, and Internet Blogs (as opposed to non-Internet blogs?).  
• And of course there are magazines and radio and other stuff, but NOT talk radio.  Interesting.

The rest of the survey is straightforward political stuff and the wording is not so skewed as to make the results unreliable.  But best of all, at the end, it asks for money.  Unmarked bills are acceptable, best I can tell, as long as they are between $25 and $500.

Plus I have to certify that the answers are my own.  Oh, please.