{"id":4800,"date":"2012-01-27T16:05:52","date_gmt":"2012-01-27T21:05:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/?p=4800"},"modified":"2021-11-17T17:11:32","modified_gmt":"2021-11-17T22:11:32","slug":"daily-news-lte","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/2012\/01\/27\/daily-news-lte\/","title":{"rendered":"Prison law about fairness, not partisanship"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Daily<\/a>In reviewing recent coverage of New York’s implementation of the 2010 law<\/a> that ended prison-based gerrymandering, I was struck by how often partisan interests misrepresent a law that protects the fundamental Constitutional mandate of “one person, one vote.”<\/p>\n

The Daily News<\/i> recently published a letter to the editor<\/a> by PPI’s Executive Director Peter Wagner that clarifies that the New York law<\/a> is about fundamental democratic fairness, not petty partisanship. Upstate counties, it turns out, took the lead in rejecting prison-based gerrymandering because of the way it was distorting their districts.<\/p>\n

As Peter explains:<\/p>\n

\n

Prison law about fairness, not partisanship<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n

The law ending prison-based gerrymandering was far from a partisan power grab. (\u201cArea lawmakers say prison population changes are \u2018political power grab,\u2019<\/a>\u201d story, Jan. 13) The law put the state\u2019s redistricting practices in line with the state constitutional definition of residence and with the redistricting practices of most upstate counties.<\/p>\n

The state Constitution says that: \u201cno person shall be deemed to have gained or lost a residence, by reason of his or her presence or absence … while confined in any public prison.\u201d The law corrects the U.S. Census data to comply with the state constitution.<\/p>\n

The new law applies to both state and county redistricting, and the law was inspired in part by the 13 upstate counties (including Wyoming) that have traditionally refused to use prison populations when drawing county districts or setting weighted votes in the Boards of Supervisors.<\/p>\n

According to my research, the biggest winners under the new law are the residents of neighboring Livingston County.<\/span> There, more than half of the weighted votes attributed to the town of Groveland \u2014 and exercised by the county\u2019s boards chairman \u2014 are from claiming prisoners as constituents. It is blatantly unfair for some people to have more political influence just because they live next to a large prison.<\/p>\n

Wyoming County got it right years ago, and the new state law requires everyone to use the same fair approach.<\/p>\n

Peter Wagner
\nEasthampton, Mass.<\/b><\/p>\n

The writer is executive director of the Prison Policy Initiative and author of “Importing Constituents: Prisoners and Political Clout<\/a>.”<\/i><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Daily News recently published a letter to the editor by Peter Wagner explaining that the law ending prison-based gerrymandering in New York is about democratic fairness rather than petty partisanship.<\/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-4800","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4800","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=4800"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4800\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9872,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4800\/revisions\/9872"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4800"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=4800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}