Going postal could have a whole new meaning if Rep. Jason Chaffetz gets his way.

Chaffetz, R-Utah, wants to save taxpayer dollars in the 2010 Census by having U.S. postal workers do some of the data collecting legwork.

In a press release Wednesday, Chaffetz said he will introduce a bill to that effect.

But Chaffetz has two strikes against him. The Census Bureau has already started hiring data collectors in Utah and across the nation, and Chaffetz is a freshman Republican in a U.S. House controlled by Democrats.

The every-10-year census has become a massive task, one called for in the U.S. Constitution. All kinds of federal programs, including dividing up the 435 U.S. House seats, rely on census data.

In fact, Utah failed to get a fourth House seat following the 2000 census because the agency refused to count as Utah residents more than 11,000 missionaries for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints serving overseas. Utah lost a challenge to that count in the U.S. Supreme Court.

Chaffetz said he and other congressmen are concerned that the Commerce Department, which conducts the census, says it must hire 750,000 workers to count America's population. Meanwhile, the post office already has 760,000 employees who could help out.

Chaffetz said census bosses have already announced they will partner with many local groups, among those the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now, or ACORN. The grass-roots community group that strongly supports liberal causes is being investigated in multiple states for voter fraud.

Chaffetz said he has "serious reservations" about the lack of standards offered by the Census Bureau to "ensure nefarious organizations and individuals" are excluded from gathering "sensitive data" on American households.

"It is imperative the American people have the utmost confidence in the collection of census data," Chaffetz said in a statement. "We should not rely upon ACORN to gather census data. I don't trust ACORN and neither do the American people."

Chaffetz said postal workers are trusted employees, and it just is common sense to use them.

The post office is losing billions of dollars a year, and paying its employees to help with the count could help that agency, too, he said.

"The census is a good example of an inefficient government program with billions of dollars of cost overruns that could immediately become more efficient with this common sense approach using resources already at our disposal," said Chaffetz.

Chaffetz and fellow Utah Republican Rep. Rob Bishop also introduced a bill Wednesday dealing with the census, which would require Americans living overseas to be counted. It is intended to address the problem of, among others, Mormon missionaries not being counted.

For more information, visit 2010.census.gov.

E-MAIL: bbjr@desnews.com