Leave it to the federal government to find a way to bungle an event that has been on the calendar for 227 years. Preparations for the 2020 Census are underway, and oversight watchdogs are already finding serious problems that could hamper the once-a-decade, constitutionally-mandated ritual of determining the population of the United States.

The process is getting expensive. The 2010 Census was the most costly in history at $12.3 billion. The Government Accountability Office estimated that, “the average cost for counting a housing unit increased from about $16 in 1970 to around $92 in 2010.”