{"id":541,"date":"2009-09-09T20:47:22","date_gmt":"2009-09-10T00:47:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/?p=541"},"modified":"2009-09-10T16:18:43","modified_gmt":"2009-09-10T20:18:43","slug":"petition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/2009\/09\/09\/petition\/","title":{"rendered":"Maine residents take up petition against prison-based gerrymandering in school district"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The residents of Maine&#8217;s Regional School Unit 13 have launched a petition drive to end prison-based gerrymandering in their school district.  The school district&#8217;s voting system is based on Census Bureau estimates for 2006 that credited the town of Thomaston with the population of the Maine State Prison that had closed 4 years prior.   Not only does Maine state law say that a prison is not a residence, the prison counted in the Census did not even exist at the time of the count.<\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately, the school board has <a href=\"\/news\/2009\/07\/17\/wilsonltr\/\"> refused to change the voting system<\/a>, and to date the Commissioner of Education has <a href=\"\/maine\/PPI_Demos_RSU13_06112009.pdf\" title=\"letter from PPI and Demos to Maine Commissioner of Education\">ignored  requests<\/a> [PDF] to intervene. <\/p>\n<p>By Maine law, voters can use a petition to require the Commissioner to rule on whether a voting system violates the constitutional principles of One Person One Vote.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"\/maine\/petition.html\">petition<\/a> is only open to the residents of Cushing, Owls Head, Rockland, South Thomaston, St. George, and Thomaston Maine, but this <a href=\"\/maine\/faq.html\">page of question and answers<\/a> explains the campaign.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Sept 10 update:<\/strong> St. George Select Board Chairman William Reinhardt tells the Knox County <i>Herald Gazette<\/i> that he <a href=\"http:\/\/knox.villagesoup.com\/Government\/story.cfm?storyID=175567\">supports changing the RSU 13 apportionment<\/a> to give his town a fairer voice on the school board.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The residents of Maine&#8217;s Regional School Unit 13 have launched a petition drive to end prison-based gerrymandering in their school district. The school district&#8217;s voting system is based on Census Bureau estimates for 2006 that credited the town of Thomaston with the population of the Maine State Prison that had closed 4 years prior. Not [&hellip;]<\/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-541","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541","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=541"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=541"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}