Importing Constituents:
Prisoners and Political Clout in Wisconsin

By John Hejduk and Peter Wagner
Prison Policy Initiative
March 2008
Section: Press releaseIntroductionSkewing demographic dataRedistricting and One Person One VoteDiluting votes on the state levelDiluting votes on the local levelRecommendationsMethodologyAcknowledgementsIncarcerated populations in Wisconsin Assembly districtsIncarcerated populations in Wisconsin Senate districtsPercent of each Wisconsin county's census population in prisonWisc. County Incarceration rates 2000Incarcerated populations in Wisconsin county board districtsIncarcerated populations in Wisconsin city Aldermanic wardsMilwaukee Magazine article

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by a grant from the The After Prison Initiative of the Open Society Institute. We thank Michael Keane of the Wisconsin Legislative Reference Bureau and Tony Van Der Wielen of the Legislative Technology Services Bureau for speaking with us about how Census data and the Count Question Resolution program corrections were handled in the Wisconsin redistricting process and the many county clerks who generously gave their time to help us understand how their county government was structured. Pamela Oliver, Dan Jenkins and Bill Cooper gave very helpful feedback of an earlier draft of this report and Will Goldberg helped to improve the text.