ost states and local governments are counting prisoners in creating election districts, maintains a report released today by the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF).
In "Captive Constituents," the LDF notes that "most states and local governments count incarcerated persons as residents of the prison communities where they are housed when drawing election district lines, even though they are not residents of those communities and have no opportunity to build meaningful ties there."
"This practice is known as ‘prison-based gerrymandering,' and it distorts our democratic process by artificially inflating the population count - and thus, the political influence - of the districts where prisons and jails are located," said John Payton, LDF president and director-counsel, said in a press statement about the report."
The full report is available here.
Post new comment