[EL] Equalizing CVAP without citizenship question

[Kogan, Vladimir]

Very interesting thread on the point Michael McDonald raised below: https://twitter.com/HistDem/status/1147265434267336714

Not too early to start thinking about the implications for redistricting.

[The Ohio State University]
Vladimir Kogan, Associate Professor
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From: Michael McDonald [mailto:dr.michael.p.mcdonald at gmail.com]
Sent: Thursday, June 27, 2019 9:47 PM
To: Kogan, Vladimir
Cc: Election Law Listserv
Subject: Re: [EL] Equalizing CVAP without citizenship question

Setting aside citizenship, the courts appear likely to have to address the question of statistical uncertainty of the population totals, with respect to the 2020 decennial census counts. The Census Bureau has committed to adding small noise to the publicly released aggregate population counts to prevent backwards engineering individuals' responses from the aggregate data. Think of this as a giant Sudoku puzzle: it is surprisingly possible to fill in the cells of the puzzle from the aggregate marginal statistics. This noise was added to the 2010 census counts, but few people were aware that it happened. This time, the Census Bureau promises to be more transparent, and has already released open source code that implements the disclosure avoidance algorithm.

The way the disclosure avoidance algorithm works is that the Census Bureau can set the noise level for different levels of geography and/or different categories of population (i.e., race, ethnicity, gender, and age). The Census Bureau says no noise will be added to the state level population counts, so this process will not affect the apportionment of congressional district among the states. But it will affect what it means to have districts of equal population and what constitutes a district that has at least fifty percent voting age population of a minority community to demonstrate a Section 2 claim under Bartlett. The way the algorithm works, the noise surprisingly can be applied equally at different levels of geography, so it is not additive aggregating up from census blocks, thus being larger for congressional districts. At least, that is the theory as I understand it having seen two presentations about the methodology. I and others have many questions, and some of the answers the Census Bureau has provided are inconsistent because, again as I understand it, some policies have not been set yet.

============
Dr. Michael P. McDonald
Associate Professor, University of Florida
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On Thu, Jun 27, 2019 at 9:16 PM Kogan, Vladimir <kogan.18 at osu.edu<mailto:kogan.18 at osu.edu>> wrote:
Question: Suppose that (1) the citizenship question stays off the 2020 census and (2) at least one state decides to redistrict by equalizing CVAP anyway using the American Community Survey citizenship estimates (combined with the 2020 population counts).

Have any courts ruled on the question of how to navigate population equality requirements with data subject to considerable statistical uncertainty due to sampling? I know CVAP is used all the time in the context of VRA compliance; are there any cases from that area that speak to this question? (I realize Evenwel left open the question of whether equalizing CVAP was permissible, but it seems like there are five votes on that question.)

Thanks!

Vlad

[The Ohio State University]
Vladimir Kogan, Associate Professor
Department of Political Science
2004 Derby Hall | 154 N. Oval Mall, Columbus, OH 43210-1373
510/415-4074 Mobile
614/292-9498 Office
614/292-1146
http://u.osu.edu/kogan.18/
kogan.18 at osu.edu<mailto:kogan.18 at osu.edu>
[Twitter icon]@vkoganosu<https://twitter.com/vkoganosu>


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