{"id":2076,"date":"2011-02-08T09:56:08","date_gmt":"2011-02-08T14:56:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/?p=2076"},"modified":"2011-02-08T10:04:03","modified_gmt":"2011-02-08T15:04:03","slug":"are-some-votes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/2011\/02\/08\/are-some-votes\/","title":{"rendered":"Are some votes worth twice as much as yours?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Orlando Sentinel<\/i> is reporting<\/a> that:<\/p>\n

Sumter [County, Florida] officials say it’s likely they will use inmate-population figures from the 2010 Census to reapportion County Commission districts. <\/p>\n

By my calculation, if Sumter County puts the newly expanded Coleman federal prison complex into the same district, they will be drawing a district that has more incarcerated people than local residents. This will give the voters in the district with the prison more than twice the influence of voters in other districts. <\/p>\n

Over the past two months, I’ve been writing letters to county commissioners around the country, urging them to address prison-based gerrymandering. As part of that effort, we’ve also written fact sheets about prison-based gerrymandering in California counties<\/a>, Florida counties<\/a>, Georgia counties<\/a>, Iowa cities and counties<\/a>, Ohio cities<\/a>, and Texas counties<\/a>.<\/p>\n

That consciousness-raising effort is bearing fruit, as can be seen in the final paragraphs of the same Orlando Sentinel<\/i> article:<\/p>\n

Bradford County in north central Florida — home to three state-prison facilities including Florida State Prison, where many death-row inmates are housed — also factors in close to 5,000 inmates in figuring its County Commission districts. According to 2009 U.S. Census estimates, Bradford’s population was 29,230.<\/p>\n

Not everyone in that county agrees with counting prisoners.<\/p>\n

\nBradford County Commissioner Doyle Thomas said he plans to voice his objections when the panel discusses redrawing district lines in the coming months.\n<\/p>\n

\n“I don’t think that’s right, because they [inmates] don’t vote and they don’t use services,” he said. “I’m going to say something about it.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sumter County Florida proposes to use prison populations to pad county legislative districts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-2076","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2076","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2076"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2076\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2076"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2076"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=2076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}