The size of the population and the area of the country does not really matter here.
It really does, because American census takers are required to hunt down, in person, those who do not respond to the census. That's not easy when you've got areas like Alaska, large swaths of mountains, desert, unincorporated land and tribal lands. Finding and counting 600K+ homeless people isn't easy, either.
If having a census website improves the 72% return rate we had last go around, I'm all for it. There's plenty of time to design a site and get it right, especially considering how little data is collected from most people.
