So, what happens if I don't complete the census survey?

I don’t think you will get arrested.
I was a student when I did the last UK census and I took the piss when I filled it in, nothing bad happened to me.

You won’t get arrested, but the guy whose job it is to only analyze the answers to question #276b1 (the “sells shit” question), will go and weep quietly in a corner for a while, because no one respects his job.

Everyone has to fill out the census, because otherwise it is not a census at all, it’s just a self-selected sample. The answers to these questions determine who lives in your country, what you do, and what you need. This is how the government decides how to spend your money. They’re not going to arrest people who don’t fill it out, but they need to impress on everyone the importance of their participation.

If you don’t fill one out and send it in, they will come to your house with the same questions.

Remember Osama Bin Laden?
That is what would happen to you.

My sister-in-law was one of those poor folks who had the awful job of ringing the doorbells of houses that did not return their census form.
From the stories she told I gather it was not the most pleasant job in the world.

You can avoid filling it in, there is normally a way round it. You will only really get in to trouble if you are not to smart about it, or don’t fight it properly. Here I am talking about the UK and Spain, where I have experience with this.

If you just don’t send it in, they will eventually send someone to your door. You can just not open the door, its private property, they have no right to come in. If you don’t like hiding from them, open the door, and tell them that “the occupier” is not home at the moment, and “he will be home errm buff I don’t know when really I’m just house sitting.” and also “sorry I can’t give you his name and details, data protection act, you will have to come back” and you just fob them off.

I’ve wondered the same thing myself, though I’ve never had an issue with complying. Here are some links on the subject including this one which states:
Refusal or neglect to answer questions; false answers

(a) Whoever, being over eighteen years of age, refuses or willfully neglects, when requested by the Secretary, or by any other authorized officer or employee of the Department of Commerce or bureau or agency thereof acting under the instructions of the Secretary or authorized officer, to answer, to the best of his knowledge, any of the questions on any schedule submitted to him in connection with any census or survey provided for by subchapters I, II, IV, and V of chapter 5 of this title, applying to himself or to the family to which he belongs or is related, or to the farm or farms of which he or his family is the occupant, shall be fined not more than $100.

(b) Whoever, when answering questions described in subsection (a) of this section, and under the conditions or circumstances described in such subsection, willfully gives any answer that is false, shall be fined not more than $500.

I don’t know if this applies to elephants.

I did this too.
Soon someone came to my door and in two minutes finished the Census. Done.

I worked for the Census in 2010. I was one of the people that had to go door to door to acquire the information and forms from the folks who either didn’t fill out the questionnaire at all (for whatever reason) or didn’t fill it out completely enough (the most important info really was the number of people, and their names and ages, so that there would not be redundancy, like if someone had the same name, but their age was different) or if somehow the questionnaire got lost in the mail, got spoiled in some way, or if the questionnaire was never received by the person who was living at that particular residence at the time of the Census. We had a lot of those that were folks in the military that were either being deployed or moving to another base at the time of the Census. There are other people that moved in or out on or around that date, that also never received their questionnaire.

Although it is required by law, for you to fill out the questionnaire (you can see Here how it is proscribed by law in the Constitution, we had to memorize this info, when irate people asked us how we had the “right” to be on their property and demand this information) it is almost 99.9% unlikely that you would be arrested or fined for not filling it out.

What will happen, though, as in the case with my particular job as an enumerator is that we were required to go to the residence 5 times (at different times or days of the week) to try to get the information. If we failed on the 5th try, we would turn in the blank questionnaire (they gave us newly printed Q’s for every person in our area for whom they did not have a completed Q) and they would send out another person, and so on and so forth until they got at least part of the information (the most important being the number of resident’s, their names and ages).

This meant for the folks that didn’t fill out the form, they could have Census workers, continue to come to their home, multiple times. Some of the worst ones were when the folks knew for a fact that they had filled out the form, then the Census workers, acquired a new form with the info, but somehow their was a snafu and the new form never was accounted for, so they sent out more census workers, over and over and over, to the same address. That really pissed off a lot of people. I was in the middle, as having to be required to go out and get the info and explain to people why it wasn’t a smooth operation, and then going back to our supervisor’s and trying to explain to them how their system was effed up.

Unfortunately, they did not let us enumerators give any suggestions, after the fact, after the whole thing was wrapped up, even though we all had a lot of ideas for how we could have avoided some of the problems, inconvenience and anger, so that the next time around they could do things better.

Over all my experience with the Census was very positive. Most people were very nice, and once we explained that they were not being interrogated, that just some how their forms were never received (and that is was necessary under the Constitution) and what they do with the info (build hospitals, nursing homes, schools, employ translators, etc. where there is a need) most people were OK with it. The best folks I met, were senior citizens, who were very happy to invite me into their homes, just to chit chat. The worst people, were white men in their 60’s who had some sort of right wing vendetta against the government. One guy even called the cops on me, saying that I was trespassing on his property. Guess what, once you take an oath to work for the Census, you are not only allowed, but obligated, to go onto anyone’s property, as long as you aren’t vandalizing anything, to knock on their door and attempt to get the forms filled out accurately. So when the cops showed up, I just pulled out my little laminated card that stated that the police shall not interfere with the collecting of census data (which is also another law that most people are not aware of).

So your best bet is to give only the amount of information that you are comfortable with giving, and state your reasons for why you won’t answer the rest. If you do that, what they do, is write in a note for each Q that you “refuse” to answer and write in the reason that you “refused” usually that will take care of it, and they won’t bug you again.

Hope that helps : )

If anyone is interested in the civil disobedience side of it, or just wants some more info on how to avoid completing the census for privacy or political reasons, maybe these videos can help:

UK 2011 Lockheed Martin Census Non Compliance (not the best example)

UK 2011 Census Boycott Info

A census can be useful for city planning and allocating resources, but there can also be very good reasons to not comply.

Personally, I don’t fill them in, because it is illegal to not fill them in, So I don’t fill them in out of protest that they come with a threat, and they don’t ask nicely. You automatically get a threat, to have your life fucked up if you don’t comply, so I don’t comply.

There are many techniques to not comply and plenty of defenses that you can use if they single you out, but you should look in to the specific laws in your specific area.

Every time they do one, millions of people don’t comply, and last time, in the UK, from about 1.5 million that did not comply, less than 200 had any kind of consequence.

@Dutchess_III is in the United States, so the laws here may be different, and I don’t think that our Census workers would threaten anyone (unless they were psychos, or messed up in some other way, but that is a different problem). We were instructed to always be courteous and to explain thoroughly to people what the laws were (and we had laminated copies of the specific laws that pertained to the census under the constitution, that we could show to people, and we often suggested that they look up the laws on their own computers, to confirm what we were saying) but we were also instructed not to harass people. Like I said, if one person was not able to obtain the information, they would send out several other people, until the person either answered, or gave reasons for why they would not answer, and that information was put down in the notes section.

One lady told us that her identity had been stolen, and that she was very concerned about the safety of her kid’s identities being known, as she was divorced and her ex-husband was trying to take her kids away from her. That was an acceptable answer, that I put in the notes. She ultimately gave me the number of people in her household and their ages, but that was all, and that was accepted.

Another person repeatedly told me that he thought that the law was an invasion of privacy and that he refused to answer under any circumstances (although he was very polite when he told me this) he said that other census workers had already come to his home and he refused to answer then, too. But his reason for not answering, was accepted, when I wrote it down in the notes section. Note to all, we were also required to find someone else, maybe a neighbor or other family member who could help us with some of the details, but only after our 5 attempts and another census worker’s 5 attempts at getting the answers had failed. We were not allowed to do this in the first place. This man’s neighbor, let me know how many people lived in the home, and what sex they were, and their approximate ages. That was accepted and they stopped sending people out to his home. So if you don’t want your neighbors blabbing, you should talk to them ahead of time and ask them not to give out any information.

Our trainer said that although, non-compliance, was technically against the law, he had never heard of anyone being arrested or fined or anything else.

I honestly don’t understand the mentality of people who refuse to cooperate with the census. It is like cutting off your nose to spite your face.

@Kardamom, thanks for the first-hand scoop. That’s even better than Google.

Let me get this straight, folks I FILLED OUT THE CENSUS! I had just finished doing so when I posted this question.

I would think the people who don’t fill it out either a) have something to hide or b) are non-native English speakers who don’t understand the questions or…have something to hide.

Is it census time again?

@Dutchess_III For non-native English speakers, the census hired people who spoke just about every language you could think of. If an English speaker, such as myself, went to a home and realized that the person did not speak English, we had a chart, written in multiple languages, that simply asked what language they did speak, so they could point to their native language, we would then take the Q, back to headquarters with a note specifying that we needed a census worker who spoke Korean, or Hmong or whatever was needed, then they’d just send another worker to the property. I think the multi-lingual workers got paid more.

Other people told me, when I went to their homes, some reasons that they did not want to answer the Q’s. Some thought that the government was blatantly corrupt and they did not actually believe there was anything in the constitution that supported taking the census. Other people were afraid of identity theft, or having an ex-spouse potentially locate them. And still others were highly offended and suspicious of gathering what they considered to be personal and private information, so there are legitimate reasons not to want to answer the Q’s.

I think the people who actually had something to hide, were in the minority. I never encountered anyone who seemed to be suspicious. Just a few irate people, but most everyone else was very nice and cooperative. Like I said before, some of the seniors were clearly thrilled that I’d come to visit them, because it was probably one of the few times when they had any company. I tended to take a little extra time with those folks : ) I learned a lot about people’s kids and grandkids and how long they’d lived in that house etc. It was wonderful.

I do think that the government needs to do a better job of letting the public know that the census Q’s will be coming, what to expect, how the law and the constitution work. They need to do PSA’s on both the radio, TV and the internet. They need to make people understand the why’s of the census, and what happens to the information that is collected. They need to make it seem less scary. They also need to make sure that the way the information collected, actually leads to getting an accurate form filled out, instead of having some folks fill out multiple forms, because they were not properly accounted for in the first place (that was the government’s fault). I personally received blank Q’s for the exact same property, multiple times, even though I knew for a fact that I had already been to a specific property. When you realized that you had already been to a property, and had a Q filled out properly, we had to tell our supervisor, but then they would not send the original person back, they would send someone else. So some houses, had 3 to 5 different census workers coming to their house with blank Q’s (as if none had ever been filled out) because their was some snafu in the office. I think the field workers did a better job, than the people in the office, with regards to keeping records of which properties were already accounted for. We in the field, had to turn in the Q’s, our supervisor would record the addresses of those Q’s, and we would then fill in the address in a ledger. So on our end, there was 3 sets of redundancy, but after they were turned into the office, I can’t say what happened, because I never worked in the office, only in the field.

I sometimes wanted to scream, “Dang people, just tick off the Q’s as they come in, and do it with redundancy, so that you can cross check!” Maybe next time.