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Most of us think about the census for about 10 minutes once every 10 years.

But not Hanzy Lo Wang from MPR. He thinks about the census all the damn time.

It's really hard to overstate how important how influential the census is. It really forms the

reality. I think that's the best way to put it. The reality that our democracy is formed upon

the way daily life just works in America.

The reason Hanzy's got the census on his mind is this. There's this legal battle going on in the

background of American politics right now. And it's going to determine who counts in the United

States and who doesn't. Doing a census, doing a head count of every person living in the United

States is in the Constitution. It's one of the first things the Constitution says to do. You have

to do this federal government. You have to count every person living in the country every 10 years.

And that count directly impacts how power is shared in this country, specifically how many seats in

the House of Representatives each state gets. And that is directly related then to how many

electoral college votes each state gets. And if that's too abstract for you, how do we figure out

when we need to build a new school, where we need to build new roads? If we should change the speed

limit on a certain road because there are more children living in a neighborhood, how do we make

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