Census 2010

When our founding fathers made the Constitution they came up with a plan of representation with an enumeration of the people to occur every 10 years. Here's the exact Constitutional clause:

Article I, Clause 3: Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons. The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct. The Number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand, but each State shall have at Least one Representative; and until such enumeration shall be made, the State of New Hampshire shall be entitled to chuse three, Massachusetts eight, Rhode-Island and Providence Plantations one, Connecticut five, New-York six, New Jersey four, Pennsylvania eight, Delaware one, Maryland six, Virginia ten, North Carolina five, South Carolina five, and Georgia three.

Let's start with the one that jumps out at everyone: The 3/5ths clause. If you are a free person you count as 1. If you are a slave you only count as 3/5ths of a person. I think most people today see that as a bad thing. You could vision a statement like "They only counted slaves as 3/5ths of a person, how terrible." Well not really. Actually that little clause helped more than hurt the slaves in this country over the next "four score and seven years".

The people in the South wanted every slave to be counted. The problem with that was that slaves could not vote. So the Southern slave holders essentially held all the voting power of their slaves. So if slaves were counted as a "whole person" the southern slaves states would have had more representation in Congress, thus the possibility of more slavery. So with the 3/5ths compromise it called slaves only 3/5ths of a person to get the slave states into the new union and limit their potential voting power.

The second thing I was thinking about was the Census and illegal immigrants. Did you know that the census counts illegal immigrants? I wonder to myself (and now openly on this blog) Why do illegal immigrants get to be counted in the Census? Maybe this is a place for that 3/5ths clause, limiting the voting power of districts that are harbors for illegal immigrants. Then "sanctuary cities" might start to become things of the past. How about a Constitutional amendment limiting the apportionment of congressional districts to only U.S. citizens?

My last thought was the cost of the thing. The first census cost this country $44,000 or 1.3 cents per person. The last four census costs:

1970: $247 million or $1.22 per person.
1980: $1.1 billion or $4.76 per person.
1990: $2.5 billion or $10.02 per person.
2000: $4.5 billion or 15.99 per person.

I don't know what they project the cost to be this year but if you use the pattern about we are looking at about $9.0 billion or $29 per person. I wonder if they would take all the other garbage out of the Census, like all the personal questions about you and your family, we might just bring that number down a bit. The Census Bureau doesn't cease to exist in 2011. They are always around always counting something. I think for this one time every ten years they need do only the job they are Constitutionally required to do, count the people.