UPenn Law Review: Defying one-person, one-vote: Prisoners and the “Usual residence” principle

by Peter Wagner, January 2, 2004

Rosanna M. Taormina has published a great article, Defying one-person, one-vote: Prisoners and the “Usual residence” principle, [PDF] in the University of Pennsylvania Law Review.

The piece concludes:

In this Comment, I have examined the propriety of counting imprisoned persons at their prison address for redistricting purposes. I have suggested that this practice runs afoul of both constitutional and statutory requirements. The Census Bureau’s “usual residence” principle, as applied to disenfranchised prisoners and former prisoners, cannot be squared with the Supreme Court’s one-person, one-vote jurisprudence. The Court has refused to protect prisoners stripped of the most fundamental right accorded citizens of a democracy–the right to vote. It is time for either Congress or the Court to protect law-abiding citizens from state legislatures that unfairly take advantage of the existence of a disenfranchised population when creating “equal” congressional voting districts. “We the People” demand nothing less.

Rosanna M. Taormina, Defying one-person, one-vote: Prisoners and the “Usual residence” principle [PDF] 152 U Pa L. Rev. 431, 459.