The Articles of Confederation were adopted by the Second Continental Congress in 1777 and went into effect in 1781. They were soon found inadequate for smooth governmental operations, particularly as they related to the functioning of the federal government. As a result, a Constitutional Convention met in Philadelphia from May 25 to September 17, 1787, to revise and improve them. In spite of their initial charge, some delegates to the convention intended to create an entirely new form of government as opposed to a revision of the existing one (Shelley et al. 1996; Webster 2016). The 55 delegates to the convention determined there would be three co-equal subdivisions of the federal government to include the legislative, executive, and judicial branches. Subsequently, one of the major debates by the convention pertained to the structure of the legislative branch, with delegates eventually settling on a representative democracy (Madison 1996a). After a month of debate the delegates adopted the "Great Compromise" proposed by Roger Sherman of Connecticut which created a bicameral Congress with the number of each state's seats in the lower chamber being based on population size and each state getting two seats in the upper chamber (Meyerson 2002). The framers were well aware that the populations of the states would change and a complete census of the population was needed at a regular interval--here each decade for the reapportionment of seats in the House of Representatives (Madison 1996b). The decennial census has changed dramatically over the past two centuries, but it is critical to reiterate that the federal government is constitutionally required to complete the enumeration for reapportionment and redistricting.