Opening mail ballots, tabulating ballots, testing voting equipment, manually recounting, auditing after the election, all of these things are publicly observable.
Thousands of clerks would record the information gathered in the census and tabulate it, in other words, show the information in the form of a table with rows and columns.
When we see the formations tabulated in written works, or when we follow them in nature, it is difficult to avoid believing that they are closely consecutive.