Somerset County Maryland paper endorses call to end prison-based gerrymandering

The Daily Times on Maryland's Lower Eastern Shore has endorsed a call for Somerset County to base future legislative districts on the resident population.

by Peter Wagner, November 24, 2009

The Daily Times in Salisbury, Maryland on the Lower Eastern Shore, has endorsed a call for Somerset County to base future county legislative districts on the resident — not prison — population.

An NAACP- and ACLU-led group of county leaders and community members, called the Somerset County Task Force on Diversity, has called for the county to explore the possibility of disregarding the population at the state prison when the county next updates its county legislative lines after the 2010 Census. The local newspaper has endorsed this call because over 40 percent of the county’s population is African-American, but no African-American has ever been elected to the county commission. The county agreed to settle a voting rights lawsuit and draw a majority African-American district in the mid-1980s. Unfortunately, a new large prison in the remedial district resulted in the African-American resident population being split among multiple districts, leaving the county without a true majority African-American district.

New York City Council considers resolutions to end prison-based gerrymandering

The New York City Council holds a hearing on prison-based gerrymandering, supporting change at the Census Bureau and in Albany.

by Peter Wagner, November 20, 2009

Yesterday, the New York City Council held a hearing on two prison-based gerrymandering resolutions. One, put forth by member Larry Seabrook calls on the Census Bureau to count incarcerated people as residents of their home addresses rather than at the prisons in future Censuses. The second one, introduced by member Robert Jackson and 11 co-sponsors could influence the 2012 round of redistricting after this Census, as it calls upon the New York State legislature to pass bills S1633 and A5946 which would require that state and county legislative districts be drawn on adjusted data counting incarcerated people at their home addresses.

Mississippi Attorney General: Census should change prison count

by Peter Wagner, November 12, 2009

County Supervisors in Wilkinson County, Mississippi faced a quandary after the last census. The Corrections Corporation of America had just opened a large private prison in the county, and, per its usual practice, the Census Bureau credited the population of the prison to the county.

Should the county draw a county legislative district where almost half of the population was incarcerated in the private prison? This would give the actual residents of the prison district almost twice as much influence over county affairs as residents of the other districts. They wrote to State Attorney General Mike Moore to seek his advice.

Prison-based gerrymandering cited in NYT as an example of need for reform

by Peter Wagner, November 12, 2009

The New York Times is calling for the New York state legislature to turn the process of drawing legislative districts over to an Iowa-style non-partisan independent redistricting commission.

They explain the need:

Of all the tricks that New York’s legislators use to hang on to office, the one that works best — for the politicians, that is — is redistricting. Mapmaking in Albany is a dark art form designed to make absolutely certain that incumbents in the majority party are safe from electoral competition (a k a democracy).

What the census will get wrong

by Aleks Kajstura, November 6, 2009

The U.S. Census is once again gearing up to count incarcerated people in the wrong place. This census data is soon going to be used to redraw districts at all levels of government throughout the country.

In “What the census will get wrong,” Mary Sanchez, of the Kansas City Star, writes, emphasizing the inconsistency between the Census Bureau’s “patriotic pitches to comply,” and the Census’ method of counting people in prison. According to Sanchez, we’re told that “[e]very breathing soul must be tallied during the massive federal endeavor, the national headcount taken every decade. The census is central to the functioning of our democracy….”

Sanchez correctly notes, however, that the Census reassigns prison populations. The Census data allows legislative districts to pad their numbers using disenfranchised constituents pulled from remote cities. The communities that have high incarceration rates lose their currently incarcerated residents in this count. Sanchez writes:

Criminals forfeit a lot when they get locked up. They lose the right to vote, in all but two states. They lose daily interaction with loved ones and the chance to engage in meaningful work.

The communities of origin for those incarcerated should not be similarly punished.

Pennsylvania’s growing prison population distorts democracy

by Aleks Kajstura, October 16, 2009

In Pennsylvania, there are eight state house districts that owe their existence to large prison populations in the 2000 Census. With the 2010 Census poised to count an even larger portion of the state behind bars, the prison count will be even more important.

The Census counts prisoners where they are incarcerated rather than where they legally reside. The Census figures are then used by states to draw district lines, apportioning voting power among their citizens. Regardless that the prisoners are not in any way connected to the community, they are counted in the local population making up the district. According to a recent article in Philadelphia’s The Legal Intelligencer, for example, State Rep. Bob Mensch, R-Montgomery, who represents District 147 with a population of 3,404 prisoners, has never gotten a single call from a prisoner.

Because the prisoners cannot vote but are credited to the prison district, their presence adds weight to every vote cast in the district. Such a system cannot be tolerated in a democracy. Indeed the Supreme Court barred practices such as this when it held, in Reynolds v. Sims, that: “The weight of a citizen’s vote cannot be made to depend on where he lives.” The Supreme Court ruled that the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause required that districts be drawn to be substantially equal in population.

According to our recent research, the vote distortion created by the Census count is not randomly distributed throughout the state. For example, while only 12% percent of Pennsylvania’s population is in Philadelphia, 40% of Pennsylvania’s prisoners are from the city. And virtually all — 99% — are incarcerated outside of the city.

That temporary placement however, does not change where Philadelphia’s incarcerated citizens reside under state law. Like most states, Pennsylvania law says that a prison cell is not a residence. But the growing prison population and an outdated method of counting that population combine to threaten how political decisions are made. Until the Census changes where it counts people in prison, the state of Pennsylvania needs to change how it uses Census data.

Census Bureau counts Massachusetts prisoners in wrong place; access to democracy distorted

Report finds that crediting prisoners to the prison towns leads to unequal distributions of political power within Massachusetts.

October 8, 2009

The 2010 Census is rapidly approaching, but an old error threatens the count, charges a new report by the non-profit Prison Policy Initiative. The report explains that the U.S. Census counts state and federal prisoners as residents of the prison location, and that creates big problems for democracy in Massachusetts. Crediting prisoners to the prison towns leads to unequal distributions of political power within the state.

Under Massachusetts law prisoners — who can’t vote — are legal residents of their pre-incarceration homes. The Census Bureau counts these people in the wrong spot, and that will create a big problem when the state next updates its legislative districts after the 2010 Census. Legislative districts must be updated each decade to ensure that each district contains the same number of residents.

The report states that five Massachusetts House districts meet federal minimum population requirements only because they include incarcerated people as local residents. In these five districts, the presence of the prisons in the Census data enables every group of 95 residents near the prisons to claim as much political power in the State House as each group of 100 residents elsewhere. By using Census Bureau counts of prison populations to pad out legislative districts with prisons, Massachusetts is inflating the votes of residents who live near prisons in violation of the Supreme Court’s “one person one vote” rule.

“How the Census counts people in prison is a little understood or noticed problem,” said report author Elena Lavarreda, “but it’s important that the public know how the Census is diluting their votes.”

The report focuses on the harm to democracy caused by the 2000 Census, but warns that the Census Bureau intends to repeat the mistake of 2000. According to executive director of the Prison Policy Initiative, Peter Wagner, “The next Census is in 6 months, so unless the state acts fast, democracy will have to wait until the 2020 Census.”

The report, “Importing Constituents: Prisoners and Political Clout in Massachusetts”, is available at http://www.prisonersofthecensus.org/ma/

Prison count has downside for prison town

by Peter Wagner, September 30, 2009

In a Tribune-Star (Terre Haute, Indiana) column, Mark Bennett argued that the Census Bureau’s decision to credit the population of the federal prison to the city of Terre Haute was a boon to the region. But while celebrating one regional benefit, he missed a bigger problem for democracy at home, as I point out in my letter to the editor:

It is sometimes tempting to portray the controversy over where incarcerated people should be counted as a “tug-of-war between cities and rural communities”, but that runs the very real risk of obscuring how the current Census policy hurts rural communities right now.

The impact of prison-based gerrymandering on state legislative districts is real and significant, but the impact on local legislatures, such as county boards and city councils, is even more pronounced. Because the district sizes tend to be relatively small in local government, a single prison can have a significant effect. It is for that reason that many of the people working the hardest for Census reform are rural people who live near, but not immediately adjacent to, large prisons.

Census Bureau counts Oklahoma prisoners in wrong place; Access to state and county government distorted

Report finds 7 Okla. House districts meet federal minimum population requirements only because prison inmates are used to pad the districts' populations.

September 25, 2009

The federal Census counts prisoners as part of the local population, and that creates big problems for state and local government, charges a new report by the non-profit Prison Policy Initiative.

“Governments rely on the Census to count the population so they can update legislative districts,” said Prison Policy Initiative Executive Director and report co-author Peter Wagner. The Supreme Court’s “One Person One Vote” rule requires that legislative districts each contain the same number of people, so that each person has the same access to government.

Where prisoners are counted is a particularly acute problem in Oklahoma. “Oklahoma incarcerates a greater portion of its population than 46 other states, so crediting prisoners to the wrong communities has staggering effects on democracy,” said report co-author Elena Lavarreda.[1]

The report finds that 7 House districts meet federal minimum population requirements only because prison inmates are included in the count. By using Census Bureau counts of prison populations to pad out legislative districts, Oklahoma is inflating the votes of residents who live near prisons in violation of the Supreme Court’s “one person one vote” rule.

“The problem is even larger in some rural county board districts,” said Wagner. The report, Importing Constituents: Prisoners and Political Clout in Oklahoma, finds rural county districts that are as much as 46% prisoners. “This allows the real residents of a district with a prison to unfairly dominate their county government.”

The report identifies 16 counties where prison populations have a large impact on democracy in county government, and applauds Greer County for rejecting the flawed Census counts and drawing districts without regard to the prison miscount.

The report calls on Oklahoma to lobby the Census Bureau to change how prisoners are counted in the future and to develop state solutions to protect the restricting process after the 2010 Census.

The report, “Importing Constituents: Prisoners and Political Clout in Oklahoma”, is available at http://www.prisonersofthecensus.org/ok/

Wisconsin amendment corrects Census

by Peter Wagner, September 14, 2009

The 23rd decennial Census will again be counting incarcerated people in the wrong place. But if a proposed constitutional amendment in Wisconsin passes, the state’s days of using prison counts to distort districts (and influence elections) will be over.

Currently, one state legislative district is 10% prisoners, giving the residents of that district disproportionate say over state affairs. And because county board and rural city alderman districts are so much smaller, the inclusion of a single state prison in these districts can allow a handful of residents to dominate the county board or city council.

Ideally, the Census Bureau would change where it counts people in prison. But the pace of change has so far been slow, and with time running short before the next Census in April, the number of options are limited. As the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel editorialized in 2006:

Congress has asked the Census Bureau to report on how it could change the way it counts inmates, who now number about 1.5 million nationally. The National Academy of Sciences is also doing a study.

Yes, inmates really live in prison, but in no sense are they part of the community in which they are imprisoned. The census must count every U.S. resident, but it needn’t count them this way.

Neither Congress nor the Census Bureau really needs a report here. The bureau should change how it counts inmates, and if it doesn’t, Congress should mandate it.

Unfortunately, the Census Bureau responded with an “obtuse and evasive report” and Congress failed to follow up. The National Academies instructed the Bureau to conduct research on the best way to change how incarcerated people are counted, but there too, the Bureau failed to move forward. By now, the Bureau has squandered too much of the critical planning time to make the change before the next Census in 2010.

Now, the burden to eliminate prison-based gerrymandering is shifting to the states. In Wisconsin, Rep. Frederick Kessler has introduced a constitutional amendment that would require the state and local governments to ignore the prison populations when drawing districts. This approach would not credit incarcerated people back to their homes in Milwaukee and other urban areas, but it would end the practice of crediting them to the rural districts where they count for as much as a tenth of a state legislative district.

Other states are exploring options that would identify where incarcerated people are from and then adjust the federal Census counts to use the home addresses. The Wisconsin amendment [PDF] takes a simpler approach that will address the majority of the problem.

At 10am tomorrow (September 15th), I’ll be in 300 Northeast at the Wisconsin State Capital to testify in support of the Wisconsin Census Correction amendment which would direct state and local governments to omit the Census Bureau’s incarcerated population when drawing legislative districts.