Prometheus 6

In five of those counties, the study concluded, the inmate population was large enough in one or more districts to dilute the political power of residents in the others. 

I just wonder if it can be done honestly. That quote is what folks need to hear to support the correction. It's just not true...counting those inmates increases the political power of county residents. 

In Livingston County, each of the 17 supervisors gets a weighted number of votes based on population. The census counted about 3,500 people in Groveland last year, about 2,100 of whom are in prison. According to the Prison Policy Initiative study, Mr. Merrick is allocated 107 votes out of 1,752 votes on the board. He would get only 40 if the prisoners were excluded.

Tell me getting almost triple the representation that they would otherwise receive is a reduction of political power. I will laugh in your face if I don't smack you for insulting my intelligence.

The other thing is, this holds on the national level too. It's a major reason so many prisons are in Republican districts.

Inmates Have Political Pull in Some New York Counties
By SAM ROBERTS

More than 6 in 10 people who live in the western New York town of Groveland have probably never heard of their representative on the Livingston County Board of Supervisors, James C. Merrick. They certainly have never voted for him.

But because of them, Mr. Merrick wields more than twice the voting power that he otherwise would on the Livingston County Board of Supervisors.

That’s because in the weighted voting system that the board uses to apportion political power, Livingston County counts Groveland’s 2,100 state prison inmates as town residents, even though virtually all of them have addresses elsewhere and would leave town at the first opportunity. But under the system, the inmates make up about 62 percent of Groveland’s 3,500 people.

A new study has found that 15 counties in New York, as well as the five that make up New York City, include inmate populations when they redistrict or apportion votes in local legislative bodies.

In five of those counties, the study concluded, the inmate population was large enough in one or more districts to dilute the political power of residents in the others. Thirteen counties that have prisons exclude inmates when drawing district lines.

“New York counties with prisons are faced with a tough choice — adjust the federal census data to ignore prison populations, or rely on the census and draw districts where some citizens are granted extra political clout because they happen to live next to a prison,” said the report, by the Prison Policy Initiative, an advocacy group that favors alternatives to prison sentences and urges that inmates be counted in their real hometowns.

Critics have long complained about “phantom voters” and “prison-based gerrymandering” in the allocation of Congressional and state legislative districts. The new study calls attention to the practice in local government.

Last year, a national panel of experts commissioned by the Census Bureau recommended that the agency study whether prison inmates should be counted in 2010 as residents of the urban neighborhoods where they last lived rather than as residents of the mostly rural districts where they are incarcerated.

Such a change, which would probably require Congressional approval, could benefit Democrats, since it would add population to the party’s urban strongholds and subtract from the Republican-dominated rural areas where prisons often are located.