👓 Second Judge Blocks Trump Administration’s Census Citizenship Question Plans | NPR

Read Second Judge Blocks Trump Administration's Census Citizenship Question Plans (NPR.org)
A second federal judge has issued a court ruling against the administration's plans to ask whether every person living in the country is a U.S. citizen in the 2020 census.

👓 About | Accuracy and Privacy by Mark Hansen

Read Accuracy and Privacy by Mark Hansen (accuracyandprivacy.substack.com)
I will post regular updates about data publication plans for the 2020 Census. I won't be shy about statistics, include some history and, ultimately, address the implications of technical decisions on politics, planning, research... and journalism.
Added this to my subscription list as well.

👓 Differential privacy, an easy case | accuracyandprivacy.substack.com

Read Differential privacy, an easy case (accuracyandprivacy.substack.com)
By law, the Census Bureau is required to keep our responses to its questionnaires confidential. And so, over decades, it has applied several “disclosure avoidance” techniques when it publishes data — these have been meticulously catalogued by Laura McKenna
I could envision some interesting use cases for differential privacy like this within an IndieWeb framework for aggregated data potentially used for web discovery.

👓 The Racial Dot Map | Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service

Read The Racial Dot Map: One Dot Per Person for the Entire United States (Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service)
This racial dot map is an American snapshot; it provides an accessible visualization of geographic distribution, population density, and racial diversity of the American people in every neighborhood in the entire country. The map displays 308,745,538 dots, one for each person residing in the United States at the location they were counted during the 2010 Census. Each dot is color-coded by the individual’s race and ethnicity. The map is presented in both black and white and full color versions. In the color version, each dot is color-coded by race.

👓 How the Case for Voter Fraud Was Tested — and Utterly Failed | ProPublica

Read How the Case for Voter Fraud Was Tested — and Utterly Failed (ProPublica)
From a new Supreme Court ruling to a census question about citizenship, the campaign against illegal registration is thriving. But when the top proponent was challenged in a Kansas courtroom to prove that such fraud is rampant, the claims went up in smoke.
I knew the voter fraud panel Trump convened had fizzled, but I didn’t hear that there was a court case and the concept flopped so painfully. This is some fantastic reporting. Glad I ran back across it while looking at the midterm elections results relating to Georgia and the massive voter suppression efforts that have been happening there this year.

👓 Zip codes vs census tracts | Nelson’s log

Read Zip codes vs census tracts (Nelson's log)
A lot of digital maps use zip codes as a binning feature. Election maps, property value maps, pollution maps. But while zip codes are convenient and familiar there’s a much better set of poly…