Census miscounts prisoners, dilutes urban voting power
/Back in 2000, the Census Bureau
counted prisoners as if they actually lived in the town that contains
the prison. According to recently published analysis, this
administrative quirk reduced the population of the communities where
most prisoners come from and swelled the population of the rural
communities that host prisons. Each decade, census population data is
used to draw legislative districts, so prisoners makes prison towns
seem more populous -- and therefore receive more political clout --
than their population should have warranted. Making matters worse, all
states but Maine and Vermont bar state prisoners from voting, so
prisoners are unable to influence the often pro-prison-expansion
legislators whose clout they enhance. At the same time, the urban
legislators who so frequently favor proven alternatives to
incarceration such as drug treatment see their population and political
clout diminished. According to my series of "Importing Constituents:
Prisoners and Political Clout" reports, most state constitutions
declare that incarceration does not change an individual’s residence. A
prisoner's residence remains the place that he or she lived prior to
incarceration. At the same time, all states currently rely on federal
census data for their redistricting process. Districts are redrawn each
decade so that each district contains the same number of people living
there. Having equal numbers of people in each legislative district
ensures that each person in that district has equal access to
government. This concept is known as the "One Person One Vote" rule,
but it breaks down when the U.S. Census data does not reflect where the
actual population of the state resides. [more]