Cite as: 536 U. S. 452 (2002)
Opinion of O'Connor, J.
Of course, the Framers did not consider the imputation process. At the time they wrote the Constitution "statis-ticks" referred to " 'a statement or view of the civil condition of a people,' " not the complex mathematical discipline it has become. P. Cohen, A Calculating People 150-151 (1982). Yet, however unaware the Framers might have been of specific future census needs, say, of automobiles for transport or of computers for calculation, they fully understood that those future needs might differ dramatically from those of their own times. And they were optimists who might not have been surprised to learn that a year 2000 census of the Nation that they founded required "processed data for over 120 million households, including over 147 million paper questionnaires and 1.5 billion pages of printed material." Hogan ¶ 8, App. 251. Consequently, they did not write detailed census methodology into the Constitution. As we have said, we need not decide here the precise methodological limits foreseen by the Census Clause. We need say only that in this instance, where all efforts have been made to reach every household, where the methods used consist not of statistical sampling but of inference, where that inference involves a tiny percent of the population, where the alternative is to make a far less accurate assessment of the population, and where consequently manipulation of the method is highly unlikely, those limits are not exceeded.
For these reasons the judgment of the District Court is
Affirmed.
Justice O'Connor, concurring in part and dissenting in part.
In the year 2000 census, the Census Bureau used the statistical technique known as "hot-deck imputation" to calculate the state population totals that were used to apportion congressional Representatives. While I agree with the Court's general description of the imputation process, its conclusion that the appellants have standing to challenge
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