6
Opinion of the Court
dispensing funds through federal programs to the States, and the States use the results in drawing intrastate political districts.
There have been 20 decennial censuses in the history of the United States. Although each was designed with the goal of accomplishing an "actual Enumeration" of the population, no census is recognized as having been wholly successful in achieving that goal.2 Cf. Karcher v. Daggett, 462 U. S. 725, 732 (1983) (recognizing that "census data are not perfect," and that "population counts for particular localities are outdated long before they are completed"); Gaffney v. Cummings, 412 U. S. 735, 745 (1973) (census data "are inherently less than absolutely accurate"). Despite consistent efforts to improve the quality of the count, errors persist. Persons who should have been counted are not counted at all or are counted at the wrong location; persons who should not have been counted (whether because they died before or were born after the decennial census date, because they were not a resident of the country, or because they did not exist) are counted; and persons who should have been counted only once are counted twice. It is thought that these errors have resulted in a net "undercount" of the actual American population in every decennial census. In 1970, for instance, the Census Bureau concluded that the census results were 2.7% lower than the actual population.3 Brief for Respondents 12.
2 Indeed, even the first census did not escape criticism. Thomas Jefferson, who oversaw the conduct of that census in 1790 as Secretary of State, was confident that it had significantly undercounted the young Nation's population. See C. Wright, History and Growth of the United States Census 16-17 (1900).
3 One might wonder how the Census Bureau is able to determine whether there is an undercount and its size. Specifically: Against what standard are the census results measured? After all, if the actual population of the United States is known, then the conduct of the census would seem wholly redundant.
For the most part, we are told, the size of the error in a particular census is determined by comparing the census results not with some defi-
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