476
Opinion of the Court
enumeration, without intending to encompass in the former anything like the Bureau's use of imputation to fill gaps or clarify confused information about individuals. 31 Writings of George Washington 329 (J. Fitzpatrick ed. 1931); see 8 Writings of Thomas Jefferson 236 (A. Lipscomb ed. 1903) (comparing the "actual returns" with "conjectures"); 1 Far-rand 602; 2 id., at 106; Kurland & Lerner 135-136. And the evidence Justice Thomas sets forth, post, at 498-500 (opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part), demonstrates the same. The kinds of estimates to which his sources refer are those based on "the number of taxable polls, or the number of the militia." Post, at 494 (internal quotation marks omitted). Such sources show nothing other than that "enumeration" may be "incompatible (or at least arguably incompatible . . .) with gross statistical estimates," House of Representatives, 525 U. S., at 347 (Scalia, J., concurring in part), but such "gross statistical estimates" are not at stake here.
Contemporaneous legal documents do not use the term "enumeration" in any specialized way. The Constitution itself, in a later article, refers to the words "actual Enumeration" as meaning "Census or Enumeration," Art. I, § 9, cl. 4, thereby indicating that it did not intend the term "actual Enumeration" as a term of art requiring, say, contact (directly or through third parties) between a census taker and each enumerated individual. The First Census Act uses the term "enumeration" almost interchangeably with the phrase "cause the number of the inhabitants . . . to be taken." And the marshals who implemented that Act did not try to contact each individual personally, as they were required only to report the names of all heads of households. Act of Mar. 1, 1790, ch. 2, § 1, 1 Stat. 102. Cf. House of Representatives, supra, at 347 (Scalia, J., concurring in part) (noting that the Census Acts of 1810 through 1950 required census workers to "visit each home in person"); see also post, at 504 (Thomas, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part).
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