The state of Kansas is spending about $650,000 this year to statistically send college students home.

“It’s important that students complete the census adjustment form,” said Secretary of State Chris Biggs, “so they are counted in their hometowns during redistricting.”

But why is that important?

Well, for one thing, the Kansas Constitution requires the secretary of state’s office to conduct a student census and use those numbers to adjust the federal census. The state has decided that students at public and private universities and colleges in Kansas shouldn’t be counted — as they are in the federal census — in the communities where they attend school and live for the majority of the year. Instead, according to Kansas, they should be counted in their “home” counties where they visit their parents on school holidays and maybe for a couple of months during the summer.

Like all states, Kansas uses census totals to balance population numbers when drawing legislative and congressional districts. However, Kansas apparently is the only state that is unwilling to accept federal census figures for that purpose and conducts a costly separate count to move students back to their “home” addresses.

It’s understandable that people in Lawrence and other Kansas cities that are the home of sizable colleges would be irritated by this policy. Although those cities provide utilities, streets, law enforcement and other public services for these students for most of the year, they are not allowed to count those students in figures that will determine their representation in state and federal legislative bodies.

The fact that college communities may be underrepresented in the Kansas Legislature or Congress probably is of little concern to many state officials, but in a tight budget year, it seems those officials would at least be concerned about the amount of money that is being spent to complete such a questionable process. The Kansas secretary of state’s office reports it has received more than 100,000 student census responses and, of the 25,000 that have been processed, about 30 percent had errors that required state employees to call for information or clarification. Depending on how much state staff time is required for these follow-ups, $650,000 may be a conservative figure for how much this census costs Kansans. It also would be interesting to know from a practical standpoint, how much impact this shifting of students actually has on the redistricting process.

The question Kansans should be asking — perhaps of candidates in the upcoming campaign for secretary of state — is whether this additional student census is worth $650,000 — or anything — to the state. If not, maybe it’s time for Kansas to join the rest of the Union and base its redistricting process on federal census numbers.