KSchnee

1) How did the Constitution's rule that the government must "count the whole number of persons in each State" (Article 1) -- a power brought up solely in the context of apportioning House seats / electoral votes -- transform into a constitutional authority to ask a wide variety of questions and demand that people answer?

2) Why is it not important to ask how many citizens, as opposed to people present, the United States has? This seems like a very basic question we would like to know, as long as we're asking other things than "how many people".

In other words, the Constitution requires and authorizes asking one specific question (how many people) and the other questions are constitutionally justified by... Congress deciding that they wanted that authority, right?