Cite as: 517 U. S. 1 (1996)
Opinion of the Court
adjustment of the census through the PES would "abandon a two hundred year tradition of how we actually count people." Id., at 138a. Before taking a "step of that magnitude," he held, it was necessary to be "certain that it would make the census better and the distribution of the population more accurate." Ibid. Emphasizing that the primary purpose of the census was to apportion political representation among the States, the Secretary concluded that "the primary criterion for accuracy should be distributive accuracy—that is, getting most nearly correct the proportions of people in different areas." Id., at 146a-147a.
After reviewing the recommendations of his advisers and the voluminous statistical research that had been compiled, the Secretary concluded that although numerical accuracy (at the national level) might be improved through statistical adjustment, he could not be confident that the distributive accuracy of the census—particularly at the state and local level—would be improved by a PES-based adjustment.6 Id., at 140a-141a, 200a-201a. In particular, the Secretary noted, the adjusted figures became increasingly unreliable as one focused upon smaller and smaller political subdivisions. Id., at 142a.
The Secretary stated that his decision not to adjust was buttressed by a concern that adjustment of the 1990 census might present significant problems in the future. Id., at 143a. Because small changes in adjustment methodology would have a large impact upon apportionment—an impact that could be determined before a particular methodology was chosen—the Secretary found that statistical adjustment
6 The distinction between distributive and numerical accuracy becomes clear with an example. Imagine that the Bureau somehow were able to determine definitely that the census had failed to count exactly 10 million people nationwide. If those 10 million "persons" were added to the Nation's total population, and all 10 million were allocated to one particular State, then the numerical accuracy of the census would be improved, but the distributive accuracy would almost certainly be significantly impaired.
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