Census: No easy task ahead

Minot (N.D.) Daily News: U.S. Census Bureau director John Thompson was decidedly understated as he visited sites in western North Dakota to get a firsthand look at the area’s population boom.

“Any time you have a lot of population movement, it’s going to be more challenging than when you have a static population,” Thompson said.

But, Thompson stressed, his agency is fully capable of accurately counting the state’s population. That accuracy was in question after the 2010 census, which many officials in western North Dakota doubted was accurate, although they also recognized that counting a continuously changing population that included thousands of new workers was a difficult challenge.

The latest statistics, released last July, showed North Dakota’s population at 723,000 residents, and, again, many officials doubted the accuracy of that figure.