The federal government is finding it more difficult than usual to get people to complete the 2020 Census. The headline on Politico Magazine’s recent article about the once-every-decade constitutional exercise — “A Brush with Catastrophe: Inside the 2020 Census Meltdown” — suggests the scale of the problem.

The meltdown is due, in part, to the pandemic and the Trump Administration’s aggressive maneuvers to obstruct the count. But another significant driver has been the Census Bureau’s incomprehensible decision to force most Americans to respond to the survey via the internet.