 by Julian Aguilar, Sept. 9, 2010 Texas Tribune Though she represented her Dallas district in the Texas House for more than a decade, former state Rep. Terri Hodge could have been counted as a resident of Kentucky during this year’s decennial census. That’s because Kentucky, where Hodge is serving a year in prison after pleading guilty to lying on her tax return, currently counts inmates at the address of their prison rather than at the place they lived before they were incarcerated. (Hodge got sentenced in April; it's unclear if she filled out a census form before shipping off to her new home away from home.) Texas has the same policy — which some lawmakers are intent on changing because they argue it unfairly inflates the population of some legislative districts and deflates others, skewing the landscape of political representation. “If the purpose of redistricting is to apportion people adequately, to where they have the correct representation … I don’t think we can do anything but count inmates from where they came from,” says state Rep. Harold Dutton, D-Houston. Finish reading this story on the Texas Tribune website. Back to top   by Frank Green, Sept. 5, 2010, Richmond Times-Dispatch Powhatan, Va. -- Almost half of Powhatan County Supervisor Carson Tucker's constituents are pretty rough actors, but they don't gripe about real estate taxes and they never vote against him. Three state prisons holding more than 2,000 non-voting felons sit in Tucker's Board of Supervisors district. Because the U.S. Census Bureau counts them as county residents, census-based redistricting in 2001 left each of Tucker's 5th District voters with a lot more clout than his or her counterparts in the county's four other districts. Tucker, however, believes the whole county -- not just his district -- benefits from the inmates because they give Powhatan an edge over other counties when it comes to divvying up state and federal aid. "It's a balancing act to us and we are satisfied," he said. In recent decades, the explosive growth of prisons in Virginia and across the country in sparsely populated rural areas has led to distortions in districting that challenge the principle of one-person, one-vote. With the 2010 census numbers becoming available in February and redistricting for 2011 about to start, the Virginia General Assembly has a chance to alter the way prisoners figure into county and city redistricting, as it did in 2001 when counties with populations that were more than 12 percent prisoners were permitted to ignore the inmates when doing internal redistricting. Counties like Powhatan, however, do not have enough inmates to qualify and must include them. Peter Wagner, executive director of the Prison Policy Initiative, urges Virginia to allow any city or county with prisoners to ignore them when redistricting -- as do about 100 counties in other states across the country -- in order to give every voter equal representation. "Every single resident of districts 1, 2, 3, and 4 in Powhatan County have their votes on county issues diluted because District 5 is being padded with prisoners. In fact, a vote cast in the 5th District is worth almost twice as much as a vote cast anywhere else in the county," he said. Finish reading this story on the Times-Dispatch website. Back to top  Podcast with Bruce Riley, organizer at Direct Action for Rights and Equality, Providence Rhode Island. Back to top Tom Howe has has a lengthy article Where should inmates be counted for redistricting? in the Texas House Research Organizations' Interim News. The article cites a lot of our research, including: Back to top Please support this work The Prison Policy Initiative depends on the support of the people who receive this newsletter. If you can help support our work with a tax-deductible contribution via credit card, or with a paper check sent to the address below, please do so today. | 
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