Thursday, August 20, 2015

Prison Population Affecting State's Redistricting Fights


Florida’s prison population is fast becoming a point of contention in the Legislature’s attempt to redraw the state’s congressional districts.

The last Census counted more than 160,000 people in Florida correctional facilities, and they cannot vote. But they can skew how districts are drawn, and ultimately who represents the state in the U.S. House of Representatives. That is exactly what U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown, D-Jacksonville, is convinced is happening in North Florida.

Brown said the proposed new Congressional District 5 stretching from Jacksonville to Tallahassee will see a reduction in the percentage of black residents who are of voting age, a key measure used to ensure black voters can elect who they want to represent them in Congress, from 50 percent to 45 percent under the map that passed the House on Tuesday and is expected to be before the Senate on Wednesday.

But Brown, who is suing the Legislature to block the redrawing of her district, said the reduction of the black voting age population in her district could be even greater because her new district would have 17,000 prisoners in it, giving it one of the highest prison populations in the state. Her current district has just 10,000.

In New York, this issue has been around for a long time, but it is stuck around the "One Person, One Vote" doctrine. New York City complains that the upstate prison populations skews the allocation of representatives, state and congressional, and finance allocations.

I have gone back and forth with this issue. By counting prison populations and any citizen who can not vote, undocumented, children, and non-registered, will create unequal representation. But the elected representative is supposed to represent all the citizens in his district.

So do you count people or voters?











NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote! Michael H. Drucker
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