Sarah Walker shared this great-but-unpublished letter to the editor with us:<\/p>\n
\nMinn. Census prison count comes with downside<\/h2>\n
Dear Editor,<\/p>\n
The Census Bureau is counting the people incarcerated at the FMC
\nprison as residents of the town [“FMC inmates are Rochester residents, too”] but the article only touched only a serious downside: this population is used to draw city ward districts.<\/p>\nMinnesota doesn’t let prisoners vote, and the state constitution says
\nthat they aren’t residents of Rochester: “no person loses residence …
\nwhile confined in any public prison.” (Art VII, Section 2.) Using prison
\ncounts to make the ward with the prison look more populous distorts
\nthe idea of One Person One Vote. It is not fair to grant every 94
\nresidents who live near the prison the same influence as 100 residents of other
\nwards. <\/p>\nThe solution? Do what Pine County does and ignore the prison population when drawing local districts. Or support S.F. 3097\/H.F. 3536<\/a> which would prohibit the state, county and local districts from using prison populations as padding at districting time. <\/p>\n
Let’s make the promise of equal representation real.<\/p>\n