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Census Bureau’s Counting of Prisoners Benefits Some Rural Voting Districts
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| Contributor | RP |
| Last Edited | RP Oct 26, 2008 06:40pm |
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| Category | General |
| Media | Newspaper - New York Times |
| News Date | Friday, October 24, 2008 12:00:00 AM UTC0:0 |
| Description | Danny R. Young, a 53-year-old backhoe operator for Jones County in eastern Iowa, was elected to the Anamosa City Council with a total of two votes — both write-ins, from his wife and a neighbor.
While the Census Bureau says Mr. Young’s ward has roughly the same population as the city’s three others, or about 1,400 people, his constituents wield about 25 times more political clout.
That is because his ward includes 1,300 inmates housed in Iowa’s largest penitentiary — none of whom can vote. Only 58 of the people who live in Ward 2 are nonprisoners. That discrepancy has made Anamosa a symbol for a national campaign to change the way the Census Bureau counts prison inmates.
“Do I consider them my constituents?” Mr. Young said of the inmates who constitute an overwhelming majority of the ward’s population. “They don’t vote, so, I guess, not really.”
Concerns about so-called prison-based gerrymandering have grown as the number of inmates around the nation has ballooned. Similar disparities have been identified in upstate New York, Tennessee and Wisconsin.
Critics say the census should count prisoners in the district where they lived before they were incarcerated. |
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