{"id":3494,"date":"2011-08-24T09:30:54","date_gmt":"2011-08-24T13:30:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/?p=3494"},"modified":"2021-11-17T16:41:38","modified_gmt":"2021-11-17T21:41:38","slug":"dale-ho-ky","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/2011\/08\/24\/dale-ho-ky\/","title":{"rendered":"Dale Ho of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund testifies before the Kentucky Legislature on prison-based gerrymandering"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday, Dale Ho, Assistant Counsel with the  <a href=\"http:\/\/naacpldf.org\/update\/ldf-testifies-kentucky-legislature-concerning-prison-based-gerrymandering\">NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF)<\/a>, testified about the issue of prison-based gerrymandering before the <a href=\"\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/50states\/KY.html\">Kentucky<\/a> General Assembly&#8217;s Task Force on Elections, Constitutional Amendments, and Intergovernmental Affairs.<\/p>\n<p>In his compelling <a href=\"http:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20130305110757\/http:\/\/naacpldf.org\/files\/case_issue\/Dale%20Ho%20Testimony%20Kentucky.pdf\">testimony<\/a>, Mr. Ho explained that prison-based gerrymandering distorts the allocation of political representation in Kentucky on both the county and the state level, pointing in particular to House Districts 59 and 77, where 8.1% and 5.6%, respectively, of the so-called \u201cresidents\u201d are are behind bars. He also pointed out that both Kentucky state law and court rulings on the state and federal level unambiguously say that incarcerated people are <i>not<\/i> legal residents of the facility in which they are imprisoned.<\/p>\n<p>Mr. Ho explained to the legislature that prison-based gerrymandering often has the effect of painting a false picture of racial demographics, illustrating this point with the example of Morgan County, where only 18 of the 611 African American county &#8220;residents&#8221; counted by the Census Bureau in 2000 were not incarcerated.<\/p>\n<p>One <a href=\"\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/factsheets\/ky\/ky_counties.pdf\">Kentucky county<\/a>, Boyle County, refused to engage in prison-based gerrymandering after the 2000 Census by excluding the prison population for redistricting purposes. Mr. Ho urged Kentucky to follow Boyle County&#8217;s lead and develop a state-wide plan to end prison-based gerrymandering.<\/p>\n<p>For further coverage of Mr. Ho&#8217;s testimony, see this morning&#8217;s <i>Richmond Register<\/i> <a href=\"http:\/\/richmondregister.com\/localnews\/x1592797142\/Lawmaker-wants-prisoners-to-be-counted-in-redistricting\">article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In his testimony, Dale Ho explains to Kentucky legislators why prison-based gerrymandering distorts democracy and urges them to develop a solution.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[31],"class_list":["post-3494","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3494","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\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3494"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3494\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9857,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3494\/revisions\/9857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3494"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=3494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}