Site Network:Prison Policy Initiative|Prisoners of the Census

Sections
Wisconsin leaders
Endorsements
Fact sheets
Legislation
Additional reading

Wisconsin

Counting 8,249 — mostly Black and Latino — residents of Milwaukee as residents of remote prison towns has had a staggering impact on democracy in Wisconsin at both the state and local levels. This miscount of incarcerated people misrepresents Wisconsin’s demographic makeup and skews its system of legislative representation. It is too late for the Census Bureau to change where it counts people in prison, but a growing campaign seeks to eliminate prison-based gerrymandering by changing how the state and counties use the Census data.

Almost 10% of the 53rd Assembly district’s population, currently represented by Richard Spanbauer (R), is actually made up of incarcerated residents from other parts of the state. By padding his district with more than 5,000 prisoners, the legislature gave every 9 residents of his district as much political power as 10 residents in other parts of the state.

The problem of prison-based gerrymandering is even more serious in county and small city government, where large prisons can dominate the comparatively small populations of county legislative and aldermanic districts. For example, apportioning government on the basis of Census Bureau prison counts gives some residents of Dodge County more than twice as much political power as their numbers warrant. And in the the city of Waupun, the residents of Ward 3 — which contains a large prison — have almost 5 times as much political clout as residents of other wards.

Wisconsin leaders

It’s impossible to include everyone who is working toward fair districting in Wisconsin, but if you are looking to get involved, these are some of the people and organizations you might want to contact:

Endorsements

Fact sheets

Legislation in previous sesssions

A state constitutional amendment had been previously introduced in both chambers to require the state and local governments to draw legislature districts on the basis of corrected Census Bureau data adjusted to exclude incarcerated people at their home addresses.

The amendment:

Additional reading