Counting the cost of the census: the U.S. census is a source of growing conflict: its results can be manipulated for political gain, and its questions invade privacy and classify Americans according to race.(GOVERNMENT)

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It is "the biggest White House power grab ever," Scan Hannity declared on his Fox News talk show, reacting to the announcement from the president's office that the census director "would work closely with White House senior management" on next year's census. The change in administration has apparently resulted in a renewal of Hannity's outrage, which had not noticeably been aroused over White House power grabs like the Bush administration's suspension of habeas corpus and warrantless surveillance of private telephone and e-mail communications.

Skewed Results, Skewed Purpose

But Hannity has not been alone in decrying what many on both the left and the fight see as efforts to skew the results of the next census for political advantage. The White House statement was issued after local Democratic officials and minority groups claiming they have been undercounted in past surveys protested the nomination of Republican Sen. Judd Gregg of New Hampshire as the next secretary of Commerce, the department that oversees the census. But word that members of the Obama team in the White House would be overseeing the process raised a red flag for Republicans fearful the count will be weighted in favor of Democrats when voting districts are realigned to reflect the new population figures. Though he later claimed it was only a "slight issue," Gregg cited the controversy over the census as one of the reasons he withdrew from consideration as Commerce secretary.

Redistricting is only one of the political issues involved in the census count. The numbers will also affect the direction of hundreds of billions of federal dollars spent on roads, schools, water and sewer plants, and housing programs over the next decade. At the same time, some Americans have objected to what they regard as overly "intrusive" questions in previous censuses, and many have refused to fill out the questionnaire or answer questions for the census takers who come to their doors. In pleading for a full participation in the 2000 census, Ken Prewitt, then director of the Census Bureau, noted that the results "affect power money, group interests, civil rights, in short, who gets how much of what."

In an interview with the New York Times, Prewitt said, "There's not a single question on the census that was not put there to fulfill some very serious piece of legislation or government program.... If you think Head Start is invasive, if you think mass-transit routes are invasive, if you think the location of veterans hospitals is invasive, then maybe so, but they depend on the census."

But determining "who gets how much of what" seems a far cry from an "enumeration" to determine the allocation of representation and direct taxation, as described in Article I, Section 2 of the Constitution. Apart from the question of the constitutionality of many federal programs that depend on census figures, there is the recurring issue of privacy that many Americans feel is violated by questions about where and for whom one works, work schedule, personal income, and even kitchen and bathroom fixtures in the home. Many Americans also resent being counted and classified according to race. "Does 'human' count?" one blogger said he wrote on his questionnaire.