Census miscounts prisoners, dilutes urban voting power

Back in 2000, the Census Bureau counted prisoners as if they actually lived in the town that contains the prison. According to recently published analysis, this administrative quirk reduced the population of the communities where most prisoners come from and swelled the population of the rural communities that host prisons. Each decade, census population data is used to draw legislative districts, so prisoners makes prison towns seem more populous -- and therefore receive more political clout -- than their population should have warranted. Making matters worse, all states but Maine and Vermont bar state prisoners from voting, so prisoners are unable to influence the often pro-prison-expansion legislators whose clout they enhance. At the same time, the urban legislators who so frequently favor proven alternatives to incarceration such as drug treatment see their population and political clout diminished. According to my series of "Importing Constituents: Prisoners and Political Clout" reports, most state constitutions declare that incarceration does not change an individual’s residence. A prisoner's residence remains the place that he or she lived prior to incarceration. At the same time, all states currently rely on federal census data for their redistricting process. Districts are redrawn each decade so that each district contains the same number of people living there. Having equal numbers of people in each legislative district ensures that each person in that district has equal access to government. This concept is known as the "One Person One Vote" rule, but it breaks down when the U.S. Census data does not reflect where the actual population of the state resides. [more]