Minimal Answers to the 2020 Census

In previous decades it was clear that the only question for the census that a household was legally required to answer was “How many people live in this household”. This year it got a lot weirder.

I ran a few searches, and everything indicated that the entire questionnaire was now legally required, and required to be filled out online. As far as enforcement goes, apparently the census bureau hasn’t technically lost their ability to penalize people for failure to answer, but they haven’t actually done so since the 50's.

My plan was therefore to see how little I could get away with answering, and the result is: pretty much everything.

I logged in, verified my address, and answered correctly when asked how many people live in my house. The next screen asked me for names. I just clicked ‘next’, hopefully. The error message suggested that I could just put in placeholders, but that I needed to be able to know which person each following question referred to.

Fair enough. I am your humble writer, First Placeholder, proud head-of-household for my family members, Second Placeholder, and so on and so forth down to little baby Nth Placeholder.

Everything after that was skippable with 2–3 presses of the ‘Next’ button. I submitted my form and got my confirmation.

I expect that I’ll get a visit from a census worker looking to fill in gaps on my reporting, at some point. I’ll update this based on that interaction.

TLDR; it doesn’t look like you need to answer anything other than the legal minimum questions on the census form, verifying your address and reporting how many people live in the household.