Because there *have* to be a lot of questions, otherwise it wouldn't be a federal form!

[jducoeur]

So here I am, filling in the silly form to register as a federal juror, and I have to say I'm not impressed at their respect for my time. It asks for my county -- despite having my address printed at the top of the form. It asks me to fill in my age -- right next to the line that asks for my date of birth. (Which is, mind, after the question asking whether I am 18 years or age or older.) It asks me to fill in my ethnicity as one or more of the following little boxes -- and then has a separate question for whether I am Hispanic or Latino. It asks for my spouse's occupation -- nothing else about her, just her occupation.

You have to love forms by committee. I'd bet that every line on there has a name, a story, and a Senator attached to it if you trace it back. The result is an amusingly ridiculous mishmash of little elements that are each justifiable, but show little rhyme or reason...

Comments

[rufinia.livejournal.com]

I can at least explain the "hispanic/Latino" question. One can be "white hispanic" "black hispanic" or even "native hispanic" depending on ancestry. It's not the same as being biracial, it's more of an overlay type of thing. Some latinos identify by it, and some don't.

[metageek.livejournal.com]

Well, yeah, but they already had a "one-or-more" for ethnicity. They could've included "Hispanic/Latino" as one or two of those boxes.

Maybe the "Hispanic/Latino" box dates to a time when you couldn't check multiple ethnicity boxes.

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

Almost every ethnicity form I have seen in the past 10 years has Hispanic as a separate overlay, aside from ancestry. No idea what causes that specific answer to be privileged, but my WAG would be a lawsuit at some point.

[leanne-opaskar.livejournal.com]

Maybe they're testing you, to see if you'll lie on your federal form. q:

[yakshaver.livejournal.com]

fill in my age -- right next to the line that asks for my date of birth

Forms are designed by idiots; news at 11. The one that I constantly shake my head at are the ubiquitous web forms where to give your address you have to use a pull-down menu for your state. Especially the ones where the menu is two-letter postal codes, but it's sorted by state name. The flip side of that being that one of the few times I did run into a form that filled in the state field for me based on the zip code I entered, it also filled in the city — incorrectly. And wouldn't let me override.

I'd bet that every line on there has a name, a story, and a Senator attached to it if you trace it back.

But you can't trace it back. My proposed constitutional amendment for the 21^st Century is "All government documents shall be drafted using an open-source version control system, and the document history will be publicly available on the Internet."

[jducoeur]

A fine idea -- and one that would be opposed by damned near every vested interest in Washington...