California bill to end prison-based gerrymandering awaits the Governor’s signature

Prison Policy Initiative urges Governor Brown to sign California's bill to end prison-based gerrymandering.

by Aleks Kajstura, September 8, 2011

California’s movement to end prison-based gerrymandering is in the home stretch. Yesterday, the Assembly passed the Senate’s amendments to AB 420, and the bill passed its last legislature hurtle. The bill will give the Citizens Redistricting Commission the data necessary to count incarcerated people at their home addresses. When Governor Brown signs AB 420 into law, California will join New York, Maryland, and Delaware in ensuring equality in representation for all residents.

I sent a letter in support of the bill to the Governor, urging him to sign it into law.

The bill will fix a longstanding conflict between Census Bureau practices and California law. Redistricting data provided by the Census Bureau does not count incarcerated people at their home address; rather it counts them at the location of a prison. This approach is incongruous with California law which specifies that incarceration does not change a person’s residence. The result is districts that are skewed by non-resident populations, diluting the voting strength of everyone who does not live near a prison.

We discovered that most California counties with large prisons have already taken steps to limiting the impact of prison populations on their County Supervisory Districts. These ten counties remove the prison population from their redistricting data. Solano County is one of the two counties that did not adjust the census data in redistricting last decade and as a result, every group of 9 people who actually live in District 4 (which contains the CSP Solano and California Medical Correctional Facility) were granted as much influence as 10 people in Solano’s other districts. This bill would make sure that no county’s districts are unintentionally distorted by prison populations as they were in Solano.

Messenger Post editorial calls for fair redistricting in New York

Messenger Post editorial says that LATFOR's decision to follow the NY law that ended prison-based gerrymandering is a step in the right direction.

by Leah Sakala, August 10, 2011

The Canandaigua Messenger Post published a strong editorial this week calling for redistricting reform in the State of New York. After decrying the Legislative Advisory Task Force on Demographic Research and Reapportionment (LATFOR)’s partisan ties, the editorial pointed out that it looks like at least some legislators are heading in the right direction:

There are signs the lawmakers have noticed. For instance, the task force intended to ignore a new law that requires prison inmates to be counted in the district in which they lived before their incarceration. Until last year, they had been counted as living in the district in which they were imprisoned, a move that helped pad population numbers for upstate Senate Republicans.

Lawmakers now say they’ll follow the law, which is still being challenged in court by Senate Republicans. That lent irony to task force co-chairman state Sen. Michael Nozzolio’s assertion that, “the law will be complied with, whatever that law is.”

It’s clear that where incarcerated people are counted has a significant impact on the fairness of New York’s district boundaries. With New York’s democracy at stake, there’s a lot to lose.

If you’d like a detailed overview of how prison-based gerrymandering factors into the issues that New York’s redistricting process is currently facing, check out the Legislative Gazette‘s recent article that comprehensively explains where things stand.

Will you be at NCSL in San Antonio, Texas?

Brenda Wright of Demos and Peter Wagner of PPI will be at the NCSL Summit in TX on Aug 9-10, and are available to meet about avoiding prison-based gerrymandering.

by Peter Wagner, July 28, 2011

Brenda Wright of Demos and I will be attending the National Conference of State Legislatures Summit in San Antonio, Texas on August 9-10, 2011. If you will be there, too, and you want to set up a time to talk with us about how your state or local government can avoid prison-based gerrymandering, please don’t hesitate to contact us. We’re looking forward to meeting you!

California can still curtail prison-based gerrymandering

Prison Policy Initiative and Demos submit testimony and solutions to California's Citizens Redistricting Commission's prison-based gerrymandering problems.

by Aleks Kajstura, July 18, 2011

Friday, the Prison Policy Initiative and Dēmos presented testimony to the California Citizens Redistricting Commission (CRC) discussing prison-based gerrymandering and making recommendations on how the Citizens Redistricting
Commission (CRC) can take steps to minimize the impact of prison-based gerrymandering in drawing state legislative districts for California.

In past redistricting cycles, California chose to prioritize population equality so highly that it drew all legislative districts exactly the same size, rather than permitting a small population deviation among legislative districts as most states do. Ironically, without a fix to prison-based gerrymandering, California’s devotion to population equality in redistricting was futile. This problem is illustrated by a cluster of districts drawn after the 2000 Census in the Central Valley: 8.6% of the 30th Assembly district was incarcerated in state prisons, 5.7% of the 20th Congressional district was incarcerated in state prisons, and 4.3% of the 16th Senate district was incarcerated in state prisons. In each of these districts, every group of 91 to 94 people were given as much influence in Sacramento as 100 people from any other district that was not itself padded with large prison populations.

The testimony contains more examples with detailed solutions that are still implementable, even at this late stage of redistricting.

The files mentioned in the testimony can be downloaded here:

• California Advance Group Quarters Summary File
• Block equivalency file for Assembly districts near Kings County
• Block equivalency file for Congressional districts near Kings County

So you want to be a legislator?

So you want to get elected with minimal effort? New video shows that your best bet is to run for office in a prison-gerrymandered district.

by Leah Sakala, July 14, 2011

So you want to get elected with minimal effort? Your best bet may be to run for office in a district with very few actual residents, says a new video by Bruce Reilly, of Direct Action for Rights and Equality.

How? Move to a district with a large prison, make sure the local government counts incarcerated people as residents, campaign to win the support of the handful of actual residents, and voila! You’re in, thanks to prison-based gerrymandering.

Here’s how it works:

Times Union: LATFOR is named as defendant, but not actually defending the law

Not surprising that LATFOR fails to defend the law in court, since it's actually ignoring the law when drawing new districts for New York State.

by Aleks Kajstura, July 13, 2011

Capitol Confidential (a Times Union blog) points out that, in the lawsuit to bring prison-based gerrymandering back to New York, one of the defendants is not actually defending the law.

The Legislative Task Force on Demographic Research and Reapportionment (LATFOR) is responsible for redistricting in New York, but “hasn’t exactly been vigorous in defending itself in a lawsuit filed about the issue…”

This makes perfect sense: LATFOR is co-chaired by Assemblyman Jack McEneny, D-Albany and Sen. Mike Nozzolio, R-Seneca County. Nozzolio has expressed doubts about the legality of a 2010 law that directed LATFOR to count prison inmates at their last home address instead of at their jail cells. Counting inmates in jail has been derided as prison-based gerrymandering, and inflates population in upstate, rural, largely Republican areas at the expense of downstate, urban, largely Democratic precincts.

Several of Nozzolio’s Republican colleagues in the Senate, including Betty Little of Queensbury, are plaintiffs in the suit. LATFOR is so-far ignoring the new law, which is causing groups like the NAACP to cry foul.

California Bill to End Prison-based Gerrymandering Advances in Senate

California bill AB 420 has passed the Senate Appropriations Committee and will now move to the Senate Floor

by Leah Sakala, July 12, 2011

California is one step closer to ending prison-based gerrymandering!

California bill AB 420, sponsored by Assembly Member Mike Davis (D-Los Angeles), has passed the Senate Appropriations Committee with a vote of 5-3. The bill will now move to the Senate Floor for a vote of the full body.

Some New York Lawmakers Want to Ignore Redistricting Law

Albany Times Union published an editorial criticizing LATFOR for ignoring law to end prison-based gerrymandering.

by Leah Sakala, July 11, 2011

The Albany Times Union has had enough of unfair redistricting in New York.

Yesterday the Times Union published an editorial that criticizes the Legislative Task Force on Demographic Research and Reapportionment (LATFOR)’s decision to count incarcerated populations in the wrong place during the redistricting process:

[I]f there was any pretense left that [redistricting] was going to be an honest process, the task force threw it away in declaring that it will ignore a law requiring state prison inmates to be counted for redistricting purposes where their homes are, not where they’re incarcerated and have no representative to speak of.

Some lawmakers have sued to bring prison-based gerrymandering back to New York, but the Times Union points out that the task force needs to follow New York’s enacted law that requires incarcerated people to be counted at home, not in prison.

Cartoon and coverage on lawsuit seeking to bring back prison-based gerrymandering in New York State

Mark Wilson from EmpireWIre has a great cartoon about Senator Little's attempt to bring back prison-based gerrymandering in New York State.

by Peter Wagner, June 28, 2011

Mark Wilson at EmpireWire.com in upstate New York has a great cartoon about the lawsuit seeking to bring back prison-based gerrymandering in New York state:

And this morning, Ashby Jones has a long article in the online edition of the Wall Street Journal about the lawsuit. The article, which is behind a paywall but accessible from some blog links, makes it clear in the final paragraphs that some of the new law’s biggest beneficiaries are the same upstate residents that the Senator-plaintiffs purport to represent:

For instance, in recent years the town of Groveland in Livingston County has derived about 62% of its population from two prisons. The calculation has allowed the Groveland Supervisor to exercise 107 Board of Supervisor votes, rather than the 40 he would be entitled to without the prison, according to Mr. Wagner.

What about prisons? – Georgia Redistricting Video

In this video clip, Linda Meggers explains to Georgia City Attorneys how to avoid prison-based gerrymandering.

by Peter Wagner, June 20, 2011

On April 25, Linda Meggers, the former director of the Georgia Reapportionment Services Unit, gave a presentation at the Georgia Municipal Association training session on Redistricting Mechanics. She reviewed the relevant state and federal law, including a detailed discussion of the Voting Rights Act in her briefing for city officials.

The very first question asked at the session was: “What about prisons?” Linda Meggers’ excellent answer about how and why to adjust the Census and avoid prison-based gerrymandering is in the clip below:

City officials who need assistance identifying prison populations in the redistricting data may find our Correctional Facility Locator, or the shapefile we made from the Census Bureau’s Advance Group Quarters Summary File helpful.