Every 10 years, Washington undertakes the mother of all bureaucratic tasks. When this federal government marathon happens next - in the year 2000 - some 300,000 workers will trudge down every street in every town across America, in a US$4 billion (HK$30.96 billion) operation to map out what exactly the country looks like.
It is the national census - the demographer's dream and the illegal immigrant's nightmare. While most governments carry out regular censuses, usually with the same 10-year frequency as the US, the controversy surrounding the forthcoming census is something that is peculiarly American. The 2000 operation has been degenerating into a political football so hyper-inflated the entire project is in danger of exploding.
In the Constitution, the founding fathers stipulated that every 10 years the government must make an 'actual enumeration' of the people. And while Washington maintains that this is all it is hoping to do, the issue is bogged down in issues of race, political correctness, party rivalry and the battle for control of Congress.
A federal court ruling this week upheld an unprecedented legal challenge posed by House of Representatives speaker Newt Gingrich to the Census Bureau's arrangements for 2000. The issue is now certain to go all the way to the Supreme Court - and until it does, the huge army of census-takers will be sitting on its hands.
If all the census was designed to do was keep tabs on the people and give statisticians something to do, there would be no problem; but its major functions also include deciding how to apportion federal funds to each state and - most significantly - specifying how voting districts in the House of Representatives are drawn up.
Republicans claim changes to the enumeration system introduced by the Clinton administration were conceived with one aim in mind - to sniff out more Democratic-minded voters in the woodwork and help the party win back control of the House from the Republicans. Democrats are backing the proposed changes, saying they will improve the accuracy of census-taking and ensure that members of minorities stop falling through the cracks.
The row centres on the bureau's plans to introduce wide-scale 'statistical sampling' in the census in two years' time. This means that after an expected 90 per cent of the nation's households have been tracked down by the initial mailing of a census questionnaire and the subsequent doorstep visits, staff will use the information gathered to estimate the numbers, sex, age and ethnicity of the remainder. While critics say such sampling is little more than 'educated guesswork', the government claims it will in fact increase the reach and the ultimate accuracy of the finished product.
