[HN Gopher] Evaluating bias and noise induced by the U.S. Census...
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Evaluating bias and noise induced by the U.S. Census Bureau's
privacy protection
Author : rntn
Score : 60 points
Date : 2024-05-06 15:24 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.science.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.science.org)
| Animats wrote:
| Ouch. The Census Bureau has done that for the census of business
| and industry for many decades, but there it's done by omitting
| data. If there's only one semiconductor company in a county, no
| data on that industry will be provided for that county. The
| general rule was that there have to be at least three companies
| in an area before data will be disclosed. (Two is too few; if
| you're one of them, you can subtract your own numbers from the
| total and get the data for your competitor.)
|
| If the rule of 3 is applied to the population census, and blocks
| average 23 people, then no minority with less than 13% of the
| population can typically be reported at the block level. That
| knocks out most racial minorities. So it's a problem for
| redistricting.
| lettergram wrote:
| It's not really a problem, you'd just use blocks of 4 to avoid
| the issue. Also why do we base districts based on racial
| breakdown anyway?
| vlovich123 wrote:
| Not sure if this is a sincere question or more of a
| philosophical "should we be doing this".
|
| For the former, Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act [1]
| protects the creation of majority-minority districts, which
| are districts with a majority of a racial or linguistic
| minority population.
|
| For the latter, it's not ideal. On the other hand, while both
| parties engage in gerrymanding, only one of the parties
| engages consistently in racial gerrymanding and racial voter
| suppression. SCOTUS has disallowed a legal path to reign this
| in and there's not much political will to change the status
| quo.
|
| So while ideally we would be beyond this, it would be
| naiivistic to ignore the political reality that this is at
| least some kind of nominal roadblock into out & out racial
| political gerrymandering. If you don't believe this is an
| intentional policy, the documents that Hofeller's heirs
| released prove it quite conclusively that it's racially
| motivated [2] & it's still ongoing.
|
| [1] https://redistricting.lls.edu/wp-content/uploads/Basics-
| Engl...
|
| [2] https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-secret-
| files-of...
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > For the former, Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act [1]
| protects the creation of majority-minority districts, which
| are districts with a majority of a racial or linguistic
| minority population.
|
| It's not clear what this even means.
|
| Suppose you have an area where you have to draw three
| districts. 20% of the population is black, 20% speaks
| Spanish, 20% speaks Mandarin and 20% speaks French. You
| could give any of these populations a majority-minority
| district but not all of them, so how could they each have a
| right to it?
|
| Suppose you have the same area but no one speaks French and
| the remaining 40% of the population is white. Now you could
| create three majority-minority districts and leave zero
| representation for the remaining population that by the
| numbers should have at least one representative. Is that
| outcome legally required?
|
| The problem with gerrymandering is there is no "correct"
| way to draw districts, there are only ways that give one
| party or the other more seats. Minority populations more
| often vote for Democrats so Democrats label any map that
| gives them fewer seats as racist. The only thing either
| party actually cares about is getting more seats.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I dont think they law says every minority has a right or
| entitlement to a district. It simply allows the creation
| of majority-minority districts.
|
| As you point out, which groups get to draw the arbitrary
| lines is a inherently political process. If there are 5
| groups and 3 districts, there is no "right answer" for
| which groups get them.
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| Hopefully sooner then later this part of Section 2 will be
| struck down. The Federal and State Governments should never
| be allowed to makes laws based on race.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| How do we address discrimination against racial
| minorities? While I work for a colorblind society, I know
| we're obviously not there yet.
|
| Another difficulty is that we legislate based on race
| without saying the word, both intentionally (e.g., find
| another way to characterize the target of discrimination)
| and unintentionally (e.g., our education system limits
| opportunities for some racial minorities, both due to
| poorer education and lack of social connections; colleges
| and employers, if they just follow the 'system', end up
| discriminating).
| anonfordays wrote:
| >Also why do we base districts based on racial breakdown
| anyway?
|
| This always felt like "treating the symptom, not the cause"
| approach to the problem. Voting district lines should always
| coincide with county lines. There should be some rules about
| the allowable shapes (no string of counties running East to
| West for 200 miles for example) of these districts. That
| would give representation that reflects the population.
| Taxes, governance, etc. are county driven in many (most)
| states, why not add electoral boundaries that match?
| Uvix wrote:
| Many electoral districts are _smaller_ than counties, or
| even cities /townships.
| anonfordays wrote:
| Yes, but they don't have to be with the aforementioned
| system. Maybe some districts encompass a single county
| only, and the number of votes it gets is proportional to
| its population.
| eli wrote:
| There's actually been quite a bit of scholarship on how to
| draw district lines. We could certainly do better than the
| status quo, but it's a hard problem.
| ellisv wrote:
| > This always felt like "treating the symptom, not the
| cause" approach to the problem.
|
| Given the historical treatment of racial groups in the US,
| I'd say a little column A and a little column B. Racial
| minorities have not always been free to choose where they
| lived - redlining was only phased out in the late 60s and
| 70s.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| Nominally ended then. The shockwaves of it are still felt
| today [1] because it's a compounding effect - these
| neighborhoods are still seen as less desirable meaning
| housing prices are still depressed & rely on richer
| people extracting wealth out of the area through
| gentrification to raise home prices.
|
| Also it's not clear mortgage practices have changed all
| that much:
|
| > FairPlay AI's "State of Mortgage Fairness Report" in
| 2020 found that equality in mortgage lending is little
| better today than it was 30 years ago. In 1990, it found,
| Black mortgage applicants obtained loan approvals at 78.4
| percent of the rate of white applicants; by 2021 that
| figure had risen, but only to 84.4 percent.
|
| > A National Fair Housing Alliance report from 2020
| revealed that Black and Hispanic/Latino renters were more
| likely to be shown and offered fewer properties than
| white renters.
|
| [1] https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/redlining/
|
| [2] https://www.bankrate.com/real-estate/what-is-
| redlining/#ongo...
| anonfordays wrote:
| >Racial minorities have not always been free to choose
| where they lived - redlining was only phased out in the
| late 60s and 70s.
|
| Which means county lines make even more sense: racial
| minorities may have been redlined out of specific
| neighborhoods in a city, but they still reside in the
| same county.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| For many US offices, such as state and federal legislators
| (except federal senators), the districts need to have
| approximately equal populations - each voter needs
| approximately the same fractional influence in the
| legislature. Counties don't have equal populations.
| surfpel wrote:
| It's used for gerrymandering:
| https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-
| reports/gerr...
| edmundsauto wrote:
| Because race is an important dimension that is a pretty good
| proxy for a lot of things in this country. It runs deep in
| the experience of nearly every African American, whose voting
| power as a block have systematically been curtailed by
| intentional and racist actions of others.
|
| I do "class" is the bigger grouping, but race is important
| and correlated with socioeconomics.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| one box for "Two or more races" but which
|
| zero box for two or more races but hispanic or non-hispanic
| ethnicity
|
| zero consensus on the difference between the words ethnicity and
| race
|
| data fail
| j-bos wrote:
| The race and ethnicity categories aren't designed for
| consistent data, they exist to satisfy interested organizations
| which are well suited to uniting people on the basis of skin
| color.
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