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This study provides empirical results for ongoing research and development. The objective of this study is to assess the variability of data results from application of the TopDown Algorithm (TDA) to the 2010 Census Edited File (2010 CEF) for Rhode Island and for twenty additional jurisdictions. The TDA is being planned for use to protect the confidentiality of respondent data collected during the 2020 Census. Following the 2010 Census, swapping was applied to the 2010 CEF to protect confidentiality. We assume that a version of the TDA will be applied to the 2020 CEF and that the results will be used by jurisdictions in devising redistricting plans for offices from the U.S. House of Representatives to local school boards and for the analysis of such plans by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) for compliance with Federal voting rights laws, including Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, 52 U.S.C. 10301. Throughout this report, we use 25 runs of the preliminary version of the TDA that was used to produce the 2010 Demonstration Data Products released in the fall of 2019. We use only the person-level data for which the privacy-loss budget was four (ϵ = 4). Our approach has two parts: (1) to report observations on variability of results among 25 runs of the TDA and (2) to report observations on variability between the results among the 25 runs of the TDA and the published 2010 Census Public Law 94-171 data. We observe that variability in data results from the TDA increases as we consider decreasing levels of geography and population.
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