Redistricting Prep

Listen: Census Bureau Official and NCSL Director Discuss Redistricting Data Quality and Delays

By EditorMar 07, 2021

In this "Our American States" podcast hosted by the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) James Whitehorne, chief of the Redistricting and Voting Rights Data Office at U.S. Census Bureau, and Wendy Underhill, who oversees the Elections and Redistricting Program at NCSL discuss how the pandemic affected the bureau’s ability to collect data, and how states are responding to the six-month delay for redistricting data. Podcast https://redistrictingonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/OAS_Episode_124.mp3 For more podcasts visit the Our American States Podcast Page at NCSL.org

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CA Redistricting Commission Reviewing Applications for Litigation Team and Voting Rights Counsel

By Michelle DavisFeb 17, 2021

The voting rights act counsel would provide legal support to the Commission, staff and consultants regarding the redistricting process, including the review of proposed district maps; development, use and analysis of Racially Polarized Voting (“RPV”) data, preparation of legal memoranda and general legal advice to the Commission. The commission is also seeking a litigation team in the event that any or all of its redistricting maps (Congressional, and State Senate, Assembly, and Board of Equalization) are challenged in state or federal court. To that end, the commission is seeking is seeking “statements of qualifications” (SOQ) from attorneys, including law firms…

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The Census Bureau Sets a Target Date for Long-awaited Redistricting Data Delivery to the States

By EditorFeb 12, 2021

The U.S. Census Bureau announced today the target date for delivering redistricting data to the states; the final component needed to redraw congressional and legislative lines. The relevant excerpts from the bureau's official blog are below. The press release is here. James Whitehorne, Chief of the Redistricting and Voting Rights Data Office, U.S. Census Bureau: If this were a typical decade, we would be on the verge of delivering the first round of redistricting data from the 2020 Census. Our original plan was to deliver the data in state groupings starting Feb. 18, 2021 and finishing by March 31, 2021. …

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What’s New About Redistricting in 2020? – It’s Going To Start Late

By EditorFeb 11, 2021

Really late. The pre-Covid decades were very much predictable in terms of census data releases. The apportionment data, pursuant to statute, would be delivered to the President and Congress by Dec. 31, and redistricting was delivered to the states on a rolling basis throughout March. States with early primaries in that year would get their data first. By April 1 every state would have all of the data needed to begin the redistricting process. This decade, the census data timeline has been delayed and is riddled with uncertainty. The apportionment data was promised by the Census Bureau in January, then…

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Special Citizens Voting-Age Population Tabulation Canceled by Census Bureau

By EditorFeb 10, 2021

While the big news from the Census Bureau regarding the delayed apportionment and redistricting data has dominated the headlines as of late, the bureau also announced that it would be discontinuing its efforts to create a post-2020 “special tabulation” of the citizen voting-age population (CVAP). This special tab would have been a detailed estimate of the citizen voting-age population nationwide. Here is what you need to know about this development. A CVAP Special Tab is already Produced Annually by the Bureau. The special tab that was discontinued by the bureau recently is not the annual CVAP tab that it has…

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Census Bureau Announces Revised Data Release Schedule But Stops Short on Firm Date for Redistricting Data

By EditorJan 28, 2021

The target date for apportionment data is April 30 2021. Bureau officials say a date for the release of redistricting data for the states is forthcoming, but they are certain that date will not be before July 30. A Census Bureau official made these detailed remarks on Wed, Jan. 27 to a group of legislators and staff on a conference/video call organized by the National Conference of State Legislatures. In the past, processing and preparation of apportionment and redistricting data was accomplished in a parallel process. This decade, the Bureau made the decision to focus entirely on producing the apportionment…

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Census Bureau Director Says “Processing Anomalies” will Delay Census Data Release Schedule

By EditorNov 20, 2020

On November 19th the Director of the U.S. Census Bureau released a short statement acknowledging "certain processing anomalies" in the decennial census data collected earlier this year. While the director did point out that "processing anomalies" have been encountered in previous censuses, no further detail was given to put the current anomalies in context. According to the New York Times, the new deadline for delivering congressional apportionment data to the president is on or about January 26. The statutory deadline is Dec. 31. Just what is a "processing anomaly"? An answer is difficult to come by from the Bureau, but…

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What Does Differential Privacy in Census Data Mean for the Task of Redistricting?

By Michelle DavisSep 08, 2020

The law requires that any identifying information you give the Census Bureau be kept confidential for 75 yrs, but simply removing your information from what is published is no longer enough. Big data and powerful computing technology now allow almost anyone to "reconstruct" the seemingly anonymized information. That means it is increasingly possible to identify who you are, where you live, and other information from the census results. Here's how the Census Bureau plans to combat that. New for the 2020 census, the U.S. Census Bureau will be using a process called differential privacy to inject "statistical noise" into the…

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Understanding the 2020 Census Disclosure Avoidance Policy. A.K.A. “Differential Privacy”

By Michelle DavisSep 01, 2020

The Census Bureau is mandated by the U.S. constitution to complete a count of the population every decade. Few realize however, that Title 13, Sec. 9 of the U.S. Code also requires the Bureau to "keep personally identifiable information confidential for 72 years." With the growth of Big Data, this privacy mandate has become a much more complicated task, thanks to "database reconstruction," a method of partially reconstructing a private dataset from public aggregate information. Consider the well-known example below of how one data scientist obtained former Governor William Weld's medical history from aggregate data released to the Massachusetts Group…

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Listen to the NCSL Webinar on Recent Supreme Court Gerrymandering Decisions

By EditorJul 24, 2018

Last week the National Conference of State Legislatures hosted this webinar on the recent Supreme Court Partisan Gerrymandering decisions. You can watch/listen below. The discussion gives good insight into the current posture of the litigation in Wisconsin and Maryland and other states. (more…)

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