[EL] Equalizing CVAP without citizenship question

[Michael McDonald]

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
703-772-1440 (c)
352-273-2371 (w)
www.electproject.org
@ElectProject


On Thu, Jun 27, 2019 at 9:16 PM Kogan, Vladimir <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
>
>
>
> [image: The Ohio State University]
> *Vladimir Kogan*, Associate Professor
> *Department of Political Science*
>
> 2004 Derby Hall | 154 N. Oval Mall, Columbus, OH 43210-1373
>
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>
> kogan.18 at osu.edu
>
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>
>
>
>
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