Differential Privacy and the Upcoming Process of Redistricting

Key Points
• The U.S. Census Bureau is required by law to protect the confidentiality of census respondents.
• The bureau is using a new method called “differential privacy” as part of the 2020 census to fuzz up the data in order to prevent individual respondents from being potentially identified.
• However, the use of differential privacy may cause problems in the upcoming redistricting process by injecting inaccurate information into the granular census data required to draw districts of equal sizes and to ensure fair racial representation. CONTINUED

Teresa A. Sullivan & Qian Cai, Sabato’s Crystal Ball


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