The U.S. Census Bureau is very proud of the hundreds of thousands of census takers who performed their duties professionally and efficiently and were responsible for one of the highest national address resolution rates in census history — 99.98%. The Census Bureau knows of no attempts to systemically falsify respondent information. We employed new information technologies and safeguards to prevent and identify mistakes or misreporting of data. We also conducted extensive follow-up quality assurance interviews.

The Census Bureau takes falsification allegations very seriously. Intentional falsification of respondent information by a Census Bureau employee is a serious federal offense, will be fully investigated, and referred for prosecution, if appropriate.

Some alleged incidents reported to the media may represent employment-related disputes and/or misunderstandings of operations. For instance, a household refusing to answer the 2020 Census to one census taker would likely have been reassigned to another census taker or supervisor, which reassignment would not be apparent to the first census taker. The concerns expressed by the initial census taker may not reflect the follow-up work done to resolve the status of the address.

We continued working cases in all areas of the country until the end of data collection. If we did not get at least the basic information for the apportionment count and could not resolve the status of the address, the case was assigned a final status code that showed this information was not available. As we have previously stated, the number of unresolved addresses was exceedingly low — approximately 0.02% nationwide — which will be ultimately resolved by well-accepted methods.

If you have any information or allegations to share with the Census Bureau in regards to data collection, please email rumors@census.gov.

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