In the opening of his “Undercover Census Fraud Investigation” video, self-described conservative activist James O'Keefe displayed the following on-screen text to illustrate the potential cost of the alleged census “fraud”: “If 600,000 Census employees get paid $18.25/hour and each of them gets paid just four hours extra that's $43,800,000.” Yet, like most things O'Keefe-related, this claim is highly misleading.

O'Keefe's figure is based on the assumption that all census workers make the same amount of money he did, when he spent two days training to be a census enumerator in New Jersey. However, according to the Census 2010 website, “census takers”are paid different amounts based on which local office they report to. These starting wages vary from $10.00/hour to $25.00/hour. The average starting salary for all 492 local offices is $14.78/hour.

Moreover, O'Keefe knows it to be the case that not all census enumerators make the same amount as he did. During his Good Morning America interview, O'Keefe and Andrew Breitbart unveiled that one of O'Keefe's cohorts similarly went undercover in Louisiana and got a job as an enumerator. Host George Stephanopoulos reported during the interview that O'Keefe's buddy was paid $13.25 an hour.