Estimating crowds at public rallies and events is a tricky business and one that has been challenged at two recent state Capitol gatherings.

The first was Jan. 26 in the Capitol rotunda during Gov. Linda Lingle's State of the State address. Organizers at a rally for better health, housing and human services said at least 1,500 were at the event. Based on information from the state Department of Public Safety, which oversees the sheriff's deputies patrolling the Capitol, and our own reporters, we estimated about 100. Those from the advocacy coalition, known as PHOCUSED (Protecting Hawaii's Ohana, Children, Underserved, Elderly and Disabled) called to complain.

The second Capitol rally where numbers were in dispute occurred on Feb. 22 when a large group protested House Bill 444, which would establish civil unions between same-sex partners. Event organizers told our reporter that about 2,000 people were there. One of those at the rally contacted the reporter the following day and said there were 4,000 in attendance. We called the sheriff's division and it estimated between 7,000 and 8,000. HPD said between 6,000 and 7,000.

Based on what law enforcement had said, we corrected the story and in later reports updated the number to between 6,000 and 8,000.

Wildly differing crowd counts at public events are not rare. Early reports of those convening on the National Mall to watch the inauguration of Barack Obama placed the number at about 2 million in attendance, which was later downgraded to about 1 million after researchers analyzed satellite images. The National Park Service, the official arbiter of crowd estimates for Washington events, later decided to rely on the Washington Post's initial report of about 1.8 million.

Congress forbade the parks service from making crowd guesstimates in 1997 after the agency was accused of undercounting the number of those who attended the Million Man March two years earlier. Crowd estimates for that event ranged from 400,000 to 1 million.

Why place a number at all on crowds and what difference does it make? From a news perspective, the greater the crowd, the more prominent and newsworthy the event. Rallies at the Capitol are commonplace and we cannot cover them all, but one that draws thousands is probably worth Page One play, as was the civil-unions protest. A story on a rally that draws 50 people might find itself inside the newspaper, if it is covered at all.

HPD Police Maj. Frank Fujii said he has recently reminded those on the force not to give out crowd estimates.

"We get quoted as a source and we get caught in the middle, so we don't release that information," he said.

I was recently provided a photo taken from an office tower that was shot about half an hour after the Feb. 22 civil-unions protest rally began. The Capitol blocks the view and it is impossible to see how many are inside the rotunda or if many arrived later, but it is difficult to believe from that angle that 6,000 to 8,000 were at the rally. Normally we'd have our reporters do the counting but with that many people, we could easily get the count wrong so we rely on the the professional crowd counters.

The official estimate from the state Department of Public Safety — verified again last week — is between 5,000 and 7,000 and so that is what the record will reflect.