{"id":9249,"date":"2019-05-31T09:51:47","date_gmt":"2019-05-31T13:51:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/?p=9249"},"modified":"2019-08-28T14:11:03","modified_gmt":"2019-08-28T18:11:03","slug":"nevada-gov","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/2019\/05\/31\/nevada-gov\/","title":{"rendered":"Nevada Governor Steve Sisolak signs law ending prison gerrymandering"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><b><i>For immediate release &mdash;<\/i><\/b> Yesterday, Nevada Governor Steve Sisolak signed a bill into law ensuring that people in state prisons will be counted as residents of their home addresses when new legislative districts are drawn. The new law makes Nevada the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/legislation.html\">sixth state<\/a> to end the practice known as prison gerrymandering, after Washington <a href=\"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/2019\/05\/21\/washington-gov\/\">passed its own law<\/a> just last week.<\/p>\n<p>The Nevada Constitution states that, for the purposes of voting, people in prison should be counted as residents of their hometowns. However, the Census Bureau <a href=\"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/2018\/02\/07\/frn2018\/\">counts incarcerated people<\/a> as residents of the places where they are incarcerated. As a result, when Nevada used Census counts to draw past legislative districts, it unintentionally enhanced the weight of votes cast in districts containing prisons &mdash; at the expense of all other districts in the state.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Nevada&#8217;s new law recognizes that ending prison gerrymandering is an important issue of fairness,&#8221; said Aleks Kajstura, Legal Director of the Prison Policy Initiative. &#8220;All districts &mdash; some far more than others &mdash; <i>send<\/i> people to prison, but only some districts <i>contain<\/i> prisons. Counting incarcerated people as residents of the prison gives extra representation to the prison district, dilutes the votes of everyone who does not live next to the state&#8217;s largest prison, and distorts the constitutional principle of one person, one vote. This new law offers Nevada voters a fairer data set on which future districts will be drawn.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/images\/momentum_05312019_640x365.png\" alt=\"prison gerrymandering legislation map\" width=\"630\" height=\"359\" class=\"center\"  \/> <\/p>\n<p>The legislation, passed as <a href=\"https:\/\/www.leg.state.nv.us\/App\/NELIS\/REL\/80th2019\/Bill\/6863\/Overview\">AB 450<\/a>, applies only to redistricting and will not affect federal or state funding distributions.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/legislation.html\">Six other states<\/a> have legislation to end prison gerrymandering pending in the current session. &#8220;We applaud Washington and Nevada for enacting common-sense solutions in a single legislative session,&#8221; Kajstura said. &#8220;Other states currently considering similar bills should follow its example.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Nevada moved swiftly, ending prison gerrymandering in a single legislative session.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":45,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,4,1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[50],"class_list":["post-9249","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-best-of","category-press-release","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9249","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\/45"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9249"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9249\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9258,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9249\/revisions\/9258"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9249"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=9249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}