{"id":832,"date":"2010-02-18T11:28:35","date_gmt":"2010-02-18T15:28:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/?p=832"},"modified":"2011-07-15T14:46:09","modified_gmt":"2011-07-15T18:46:09","slug":"mary-sanchez-highlights-prison-based-gerrymandering-in-kansas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/2010\/02\/18\/mary-sanchez-highlights-prison-based-gerrymandering-in-kansas\/","title":{"rendered":"Mary Sanchez highlights prison-based gerrymandering in Kansas"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In \u201c<a href=\"\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/news\/Kansas_City_Star_MO_2_18_2010.pdf\">Counting prisoners is an issue for us all<\/a>,\u201d Mary Sanchez, of the Kansas City Star, writes that &#8220;elected officials wind up with constituents to whom they don\u2019t have to answer at the ballot box.&#8221;\n<\/p>\n<p class=\"quote\" >In all but two states, felons in prison can\u2019t vote. So the standard of one person, one vote is distorted by building legislative districts based on head counts of people who can\u2019t cast ballots, and where many only temporarily live via a prison sentence.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nRecently, the Census Bureau announced that it will release data on group quarters, which include prisons, earlier than usual &#8211; in May 2011.  This new data will give state and local governments the choice to account for their prison populations when drawing district lines for the next decade.\n<\/p>\n<p class=\"quote\" >Rep. William Lacy Clay, chairman of the Subcommittee on Information Policy, Census &#038; National Archives, led the charge for the change. &#8230;\n<\/p>\n<p class=\"quote\" >\n\u201cThe impact of this decision is enormous. <span class=\"pullquote\">States and local governments will now have the opportunity to do the right thing and prevent the overrepresentation of areas where prisons are located<\/span>,\u201d according to Clay.\n<\/p>\n<p class=\"quote\" >\nThe operative words are \u201chave the opportunity.\u201d States don\u2019t have to do anything after the prison counts by the census are released in May 2011.\n<\/p>\n<p class=\"quote\" >\nBut they ought to do what upholds democracy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In \u201cCounting prisoners is an issue for us all,\u201d Mary Sanchez, of the Kansas City Star, writes that &#8220;elected officials wind up with constituents to whom they don\u2019t have to answer at the ballot box.&#8221; In all but two states, felons in prison can\u2019t vote. So the standard of one person, one vote is distorted [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-832","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-shorts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/832","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\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=832"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/832\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=832"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}