Why don't we just hire Census workers who can count to 600

From Mish, we learn that the Obama administration plans to hire 1.4 million temporary workers for this year's decennial Census, which is about three times as many workers as were hired for the 2000 census:

Jan. 8 (Bloomberg) -- The 2010 census couldn’t have come at a better time for the U.S. economy.

The government will hire about 1.2 million temporary workers in the first half of the year to administer the decennial population count, possibly providing a bridge to gains in private employment later in the year.

The surge will probably dwarf any hiring by private employers early in 2010 as companies delay adding staff until they are convinced the economic recovery will be sustained. Money earned by the clipboard-toting workers going door-to-door to verify the government population survey is likely to be spent, giving the economy an extra lift.

...

Economists’ payroll estimates for the year exclude the census numbers since the jobs created are temporary, with most disappearing by the end of the third quarter and the rest gone by December.

The stimulus bill President Barack Obama signed in February and additional funding by Congress provided enough money to hire 1.4 million Americans in total for the census, almost three times as many as in 2000. About 160,000 were already employed last year to do preliminary work. [emphasis added] ...

So let's see. There are probably about 309 million or so people in the country according to Census estimates, give or take. Thus, on average each of the 1.4 million temporary Census workers has to account for just under 221 people, including themselves. In 2000, the population of the United States was just over 281 million, which was counted by a third of the 1.4 million that we're hiring for 2010, or about 467,000 workers. Thus, in 2000, each Census worker on average accounted for about 602 people, including themselves.

Perhaps Census needs all those extra workers to ferret out and include all the illegal aliens "undocumented workers" and dead voters in Chicago and other places (a/k/a key Democratic constituencies) so that they may receive their "fair share" of electoral apportionment and representation. That's just a wild guess, though.