Leigh Gribble is a U.S. citizen living in Kuwait. He votes, pays taxes and hopes to someday return to America. But all that doesn't matter to the census.

"We vote, we pay taxes, but we don't count for apportionment," Gribble told the National Conference of State Legislatures on Wednesday. "States don't get the full weight of our vote."

Gribble, vice chairman of the American Business Council of the Gulf Countries was on a panel that discussed the logistics of an over-seas census count. The U.S. Census Bureau currently counts only military personnel and federal employees living abroad.

Issues raised included:

• How do you find Americans living abroad? And if you do find them, how do you persuade them to fill out a census form?

• How do you measure the accuracy of an overseas census when there's no reliable population estimate to begin with?

• What would be the cost of an overseas census?

Utah needed the full weight of its overseas population four years ago. The state would have gained a congressional seat then if some 11,176 residents living in foreign countries as missionaries for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints had been counted.

Instead, the state was 857 people short of a new seat, which went to North Carolina, a state with a large number of overseas military personnel, who were counted.

Whether or not U.S. citizens living overseas are counted in the next census, the panel agreed that Utah will likely gain a congressional seat in 2010.

Gribble said an overseas census count would help determine the nation's voting population, provide global data on people and economics, and would help local governments plan for the return of residents abroad.

U.S. Census Bureau director Louis Kincannon said counting Americans abroad is a "different task. It is far more complex."

He said a test count of Americans in France, Kuwait and Mexico resulted in a low response rate and an estimated population of only 14,000 people in all three countries.

However, estimates from a variety of sources suggest between 29,000 and 112,000 Americans live in France, 1,200 to 10,000 live in Kuwait and as many as 1 million could be living in Mexico, he said.

Congress has not appropriated money for further tests of an overseas count, Kincannon said. Any changes to the census policy would need to be in place before the final test run in 2008, he said.

Clark Bensen, president of the Virginia-based political consulting firm Polidata Inc., called the push for an overseas population count "much ado about nothing." He said the costs of such an effort would far outweigh any benefits, possibly doubling the cost of the census.

"I don't think it's ever going to work . . . and survive court scrutiny," he said. "Overall, the impact of including overseas (Americans) probably wouldn't shift any seats. It may shift one seat."

John Fellows, associate general counsel for the Utah Office of Legislative Research and General Counsel, called the Census Bureau's current policy of counting only select overseas Americans unfair.

"No one knows how many citizens live abroad. No one counts them," he said. "We should either choose not to count them at all, or attempt to count them all in some fashion."

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E-mail: dbulkeley@desnews.com