Prison-Based
Gerrymandering
EDITORIAL, NYTimes on
the Web, May 20, 2006
Prison inmates are barred from voting
in 48 states. Even so, state legislatures typically count the inmates as
"residents" to pad state legislative districts that sometimes contain too few
residents to be legal under federal voting rights law. This unsavory
practice exaggerates the political power of the largely rural districts where
prisons are built and diminishes the power of the mainly urban districts where
inmates come from and where they inevitably return.
Prison-based gerrymandering has helped Republicans in the northern part of New
York maintain a perennial majority in the State Senate and exercise an outsized
influence in state affairs. A recent ruling by the United States Court of
Appeals for the Second Circuit has pushed this little-known problem into the
public eye and could one day be remembered as the beginning of the end of the
practice.
The court held that prison inmates did not have the right to vote, as the
plaintiffs were contending. But the court expressed interest in the
question of whether counting minority inmates in prison as residents there,
instead of in their home districts, unfairly diluted the voting power of
minority voters in urban districts. The issue was referred to the lower
court for consideration, and this in turn has already led to a broader public
discussion of the role that inmates play in the political process.
New York State's Republican leadership dismissed the court's ruling out of hand
and tried to argue that counting inmates as residents of a prison's district was
legal and no different than counting college students at their dormitories.
That's absurd. Students live in dormitories voluntarily — and can actually
vote. Inmates cannot vote, and their home districts lose representation
when they are counted elsewhere.
Voters who come to understand how this system cheats them are unlikely to keep
rewarding the politicians who support it.
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