348
Scalia, J., concurring in part
it must have been known that various methods of estimating unreachable people would be more accurate than assuming that all unreachable people did not exist. (Thomas Jefferson's 1782 estimate of the population of Virginia based upon limited data and specific demographic assumptions is thought to have been accurate by a margin of one-to-two percent. H. Alterman, Counting People: The Census in History 168- 170 (1969).) Yet such methods of estimation have not been used for over two centuries. The stronger the case the dissents make for the irrationality of that course, the more likely it seems that the early Congresses, and every Congress before the present one, thought that estimations were not permissible. See, e. g., Printz v. United States, 521 U. S. 898, 905 (1997) (historical evidence that "earlier Congresses avoided use of [the] highly attractive power [to compel state executive officers to administer federal programs]" gave us "reason to believe that the power was thought not to exist").
Justice Stevens reasons from the purpose of the Census Clause: "The census is intended to serve the constitutional goal of equal representation. That goal is best served by the use of a 'Manner' that is most likely to be complete and accurate." Post, at 364 (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). That is true enough, and would prove the point if either (1) every estimate is more accurate than a headcount, or (2) Congress could be relied upon to permit only those estimates that are more accurate than head-counts. It is metaphysically certain that the first proposition is false, and morally certain that the second is. To give Congress the power, under the guise of regulating the "Manner" by which the census is taken, to select among various estimation techniques having credible (or even incredible) "expert" support is to give the party controlling Congress the power to distort representation in its own favor. In other words, genuine enumeration may not be the most accurate way of determining population, but it may be the most accurate way of determining population with minimal possi-
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