Secret Census Algorithm STOLE House Seats from Red States!

Quick Overview

The 2020 Census was deliberately rigged using a secret, unvetted algorithm called 'differential privacy' that inaccurately allocated seats and billions in federal funding, disproportionately harming Republican-leaning states and benefitting Democratic-leaning states, leading to a shift of nine House seats away from Republican-leaning states and costing them over $86 billion in federal funds.

Key Points: The 2020 Census was marketed as an 'actual enumeration' but used a secretive, unvetted algorithm called 'differential privacy' by Census Bureau's Chief Scientist, John M. Abowd. This algorithm intentionally injected mathematical noise into every block count, turning the census from a headcount into a model, which resulted in significant coverage errors, with 14 states showing significant errors. Republican-leaning states were widely undercounted, leading to a shift of nine House seats away from them toward Democratic-leaning states. Florida's undercount was roughly three-quarters of a million people, and Texas's undercount was on the order of half a million, both of which should have gained congressional seats. The error cost states billions in federal funding; states like Florida, Minnesota, and Rhode Island kept seats they would have had under an accurate count, while Colorado gained a seat it did not deserve. The Supreme Court's opinion in Department of Commerce v. House of Representatives (2000) made clear that statistical sampling for apportionment is illegal on statutory grounds, but Abowd's algorithm amounted to statistical sampling by another name. The core lever in the privacy budget, Epsilon, is not a philosophy but a number with consequences, with an Epsilon of 15.81 resulting in the effective erasure of the order of 30 to 95 people in small areas.

Context: The discussion centers on the alleged manipulation of the 2020 US Census data by Census Bureau Chief Scientist John M. Abowd through the implementation of a new, opaque methodology called 'differential privacy.' The speaker argues this was done to intentionally alter population counts, impacting congressional apportionment and federal funding allocation, which disproportionately favored Democratic-leaning states over Republican-leaning states.