506
Opinion of Thomas, J.
no suggestion, however, that his additional "conjectures" were used for apportionment. See T. Woolsey, The First Century of the Republic 221 (1876); Alterman 205. "Despite its deficiencies, the census provided the factual base about the American people which officials and scholars needed." Cassedy 220. Thus, while the Court asserts that there was a "strong constitutional interest in accuracy," ante, at 478, the stronger suggestion is that the Framers placed a higher value on preventing political manipulation.
IV
The text, history, and a review of the original understanding of the Census Clause confirm that an actual enumeration means an actual count, without estimation. While more sophisticated statistical techniques may be available today than at the time of the founding, the Framers had a great deal of familiarity with alternative methods of calculating population. They decided to constitutionalize the arduous task of an actual enumeration. I am persuaded that much like the earlier methods of estimation, hot-deck imputation—a modern statistical technique that the Census Bureau refers to as "estimation"—is not constitutionally permissible.
In recent decades, decisions regarding whether, and what kind of, imputation and other statistical methods should be utilized have changed from administration to administration. Departing from past practice, imputation was first used in the year 1960 census. The Bureau has used some form of it in every decennial census since then. Plaintiffs' Statement of Undisputed Facts, App. 44; Response to Plaintiffs' Statement of Material Facts, id., at 222. In the year 1970 census, about 900,000 persons were imputed to the apportionment count through household size and occupancy imputation. The Census Bureau also used a form of estimation that combined imputation and sampling. Declaration of Howard Hogan, id., at 268-269 (hereinafter Hogan). In 1980, the use of imputation shifted one seat in the House of Representa-
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