Liz Cheney’s replacement, Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-WY), pulled no punches when she sounded off on the way the 2020 Census was used to disenfranchise and attack American citizens, with the representative arguing that it effectively “cooked the books” to the detriment of Americans. Such came during the “Enumeration or Estimation: Why Inaccurate Census Results Hurt American Citizens” hearing.
Such came when Rep. Hageman spoke to Trey Mayfield about the state of things in America with our census, and Mayfield, a lawyer, pointed out just how disastrous things really are due to the ways by which the left has used it to “cook the books”, as Rep. Hageman claimed, rather than follow the common-sense procedures engaged in by other countries.
Hageman said, kicking off that part of the conversation, “Almost all countries that conduct a census
actually have a citizenship question, and the U.N. says that it is best practice to include a citizenship question in these censuses. Counties that ask about citizenship are Canada, Australia, Ireland, Germany, and Mexico. The source of this is The New York Times.”
She continued, commenting on how the census does not count citizenship despite the immense importance of that question, saying, “Mr. Mayfield, I would like to focus on the Census Bureau’s
decision to utilize the differential privacy methodology for the first time in the 2020 Census.”
She added, “I am incredibly concerned that intentionally creating structural inaccuracy census data collection at the lowest unit has impacted the reliability of nationwide census counts, Congressional reapportionment, assignment of Presidential electors, redistricting, and Federal funding allocations.
In light of these concerns, could you briefly explain the steps that the Census Bureau took when adopting and implementing this differential privacy within the 2020 Census?”
Mayfield, responding, said that the federal bureaucracy made that happen: “To put it in shorthand, Congresswoman, this was done at the civil servant level without any legal opinion being obtained. The decision was made by John Abowd, who is the Director of Privacy and Statistics, and a small group of people working with him. There was actually opposition from other parts of the bureau because the test repeatedly demonstrated that it would falsify data, including the block level that you mentioned, but anything below the State level.”
He continued, “They proceeded with that because they wanted to do differential privacy, not because there was any need for differential privacy. Data swapping, which was the method used in the previous three censuses, had always been adequate, and to this day there is still no problem with it. There is a 2023 study by researchers from Harvard, NYU, and Columbia that finds that data swapping is just as good as differential privacy, but it doesn’t alter the data. There was no reason to do this.”
"*" indicates required fields
He then argued, “Now, to give you an example of just how bad it is, this is post-use of differential privacy–that study found the use of differential privacy, for instance, if you had three Hispanics on one block, you create a variance anywhere in the State of zero Hispanics or six Hispanics. In other words, 100 percent difference either way. All the data, as Mr. Miller alluded, below the State level has been subjected to differential privacy. Because of the way the algorithm works–it’s a top-down algorithm–none of the data can be released in unaltered form. You cannot actually get the results of the survey below the State level. You may know there are nine million people in Indiana, but you don’t know how many people there are in Muncie, you don’t know how many people there are on Mayfield Street in Muncie.”
Hageman, summarizing what he had just told her, said, “They cooked the books, and they did so
intentionally. Is that a good way of describing it?” Agreeing with her assessment of the situation, Mayfield explained, “That is accurate.”
Hageman, chiming back in, said, “All right. They didn’t follow the Administrative Procedures Act, they didn’t put this out for notice and comment, they didn’t solicit information from people, statisticians, economists, States, or local governments about how best to do the census of counting their people to do
as Mr. Yang says, which is to know how many people live in our country. They didn’t do any of that?” Mayfield then told her, “It’s even worse than that, Congressman and Congresswoman.”
Watch it here:
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video