[2] The group was created by Stephen Robert Morse, a journalist and filmmaker as a project to identify reasons why the 2010 U.S. Census would be a controversial process.

As part of this process, Morse applied and won a grant through The Robert Novak Journalism Fellowship program from the Phillips Foundation.

Morse first developed the idea as he was on Craigslist, looking for an additional job in San Francisco soon after college graduation, and noticed that the US Census Bureau was looking to hire employees in the Bay Area at the rate of $22-$26 per hour.

[4] After further research, Morse and University of Pennsylvania friend Evan Goldin created the group's website and blog, MyTwoCensus.com, in order to provide unofficial oversight for the U.S. Census Bureau.

[6] In 2009, MyTwoCensus discovered that the U.S. Census Bureau had supposedly paid the delivery company FedEx several million dollars over time to mail documents that were not time-sensitive[citation needed].