Politics makes strange befellows, as the saying goes. See Salon.com’s post, “Will trade: One black Democrat for one Mormon Republican,” reviewing the pending legislation that will give Washington D.C. “actual voting representation in the House” and, at the same time, grant Utah one additional seat in the House of Representatives.

Here’s a fuller explanation from the article.

The Senate is expected to pass legislation Thursday or Friday that would expand the House to 437 members, adding one seat for the District and one seat for Utah, where officials say the 2000 Census would have yielded an extra seat if overseas Mormon missionaries had been counted.

Given the early maneuvering we have already seen by the Obama administration to politicize the 2010 Census, it’s odd to find unnamed “officials” giving as justification for the additional Utah seat a prior failure to count Utah residents serving overseas as Mormon missionaries. I can’t say I’m familiar with the Census rules for counting US residents who are out of the country. Perhaps this will be one of the changes the Obama White House (which plans to directly manage the 2010 Census) will make to improve the accuracy of the Census.