Maryland Enacts Law to Count Incarcerated People at Their Home Addresses

[ccharles000]

Annapolis, MD--Today, Governor Martin O’Malley signed into law a bill ensuring that incarcerated persons will be counted as residents of their home addresses when new state and local legislative districts are drawn in Maryland.

The U.S. Census counts incarcerated people as residents of the prison location. When state and local government bodies use Census counts to draw legislative districts, they unintentionally enhance the weight of a vote cast in districts that contain prisons at the expense of all other districts in the state. Maryland is the first state to pledge to collect the home addresses of incarcerated people and correct the data state-wide.

The new law will help Maryland correct past distortions in representation caused by counting incarcerated persons as residents of prisons, such as the following:

* 18% of the population currently credited to House of Delegates District 2B (near Hagerstown) is actually incarcerated people from other parts of the state. In effect, by using uncorrected Census data to draw legislative districts, the legislature granted every group of 82 residents in this districts as much political influence as 100 residents of every other district.

* In Somerset County, a large prison is 64% of the 1st Commission District, giving each resident in that district 2.7 times as much influence as residents in other districts. Even more troubling is that by including the prison population as “residents” in county districts, the county has been unable to draw an effective majority-African American district and has had no African-American elected to county government, despite settlement of a vote dilution lawsuit in the 1980s.


http://demos.org/press.cfm?currentarticleID=F83424BF-3FF4-6C82-5CD482A7547074AD

[pinto]

1. This really is the fairest approach, imo. So many things ride on residency stats.

CA counties with large state prisons whose inmates will - by law - return to the county of conviction (usually the home county) if released, are not counted in that county until the next census. Meanwhile, the county with the State prison will have that population (at maximum for virtually all prisons) counted as county residents for all purposes for 10 years.

[Canuckistanian]

2. Too bad Florida didn't have this law in 2000

But then, we all know why.

[NYC Liberal]

3. I still get sick thinking about that. They did all they could to make it close

and then the right-wing SCOTUS handed it to them.

[Canuckistanian]

4. That's the only reason for using that tactic

The vote MUST be close. They just needed that EXTRA push to secure the presidency.

Nader, butterfly ballots and Choicepoint gave them the edge they needed.

[NYC Liberal]

5. Yep. And in 2004, flyers were distributed in Ohio telling people

that Election Day was moved to Wednesday, do NOT show up to polling places on Tuesday. Can you guess what areas those flyers were found in? :grr:

[Bitwit1234]

6. That is what gives those right wing radical supporters of

radical politics so much clout. If they didn't have all those prison populations in those panhandle counties their votes for republicans wouldn't count so damn much.

That is what they are trying to do in Minnesota. Take Stillwater and some other prison out of Michele Bachmann's district. Which would cut her totals drastically. And so it should be.

[Rage Inc.]

7. K&R