PRISON-BASED GERRYMANDERING

Prison inmates are barred from voting in 48 states. Even so, state
legislatures typically count the inmates as "residents" to pad state
legislative districts that sometimes contain too few residents to be
legal under federal voting rights law. This unsavory practice
exaggerates the political power of the largely rural districts where
prisons are built and diminishes the power of the mainly urban
districts where inmates come from and where they inevitably return.

Prison-based gerrymandering has helped Republicans in the northern
part of New York maintain a perennial majority in the State Senate and
exercise an outsized influence in state affairs. A recent ruling by
the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has pushed
this little-known problem into the public eye and could one day be
remembered as the beginning of the end of the practice.

The court held that prison inmates did not have the right to vote, as
the plaintiffs were contending. But the court expressed interest in
the question of whether counting minority inmates in prison as
residents there, instead of in their home districts, unfairly diluted
the voting power of minority voters in urban districts. The issue was
referred to the lower court for consideration, and this in turn has
already led to a broader public discussion of the role that inmates
play in the political process.

New York State's Republican leadership dismissed the court's ruling
out of hand and tried to argue that counting inmates as residents of a
prison's district was legal and no different than counting college
students at their dormitories. That's absurd. Students live in
dormitories voluntarily -- and can actually vote. Inmates cannot vote,
and their home districts lose representation when they are counted
elsewhere.

Voters who come to understand how this system cheats them are unlikely
to keep rewarding the politicians who support it.