December 16, 2020 7:00 a.m.
When Utah lawmakers had the chance to kick the tires on a new privacy program the Census Bureau is planning for the 2020 data, what they found was troubling.
A test in February on a version of the program that was run on 2010 census numbers produced a major distortion of what cities and towns in rural Utah look like. The populations in the tiny towns of Tabiona and Alton were shrunk to less than half their actual sizes. Twenty cities overall saw 20 percent or more of their inhabitants wiped away, and the state incurred a net population loss of nearly 15,000. The smallest town in Utah, the former mining town of Scofield, saw its inhabitants double from 24 to 52.