From Vera Institute:
When voters across the United States go to the polls, they believe their choice will come down to who will represent their communities best. But what they might not know is that, in some parts of the country, their candidates will represent districts that include people whose homes are far away—and who might not have any choice in the matter.
In the vast majority of states, voters will be casting their ballots in legislative maps misshapen—sometimes dramatically—by prison gerrymandering, the practice of counting incarcerated people where they are detained, rather than in their actual homes. This method has been used since the first U.S. census in 1790. While this practice has always been unjust, the explosion of racialized mass incarceration over the past decades has exacerbated its impact.
To confront the issue, lawmakers and organizers across the country are slowly chipping away at prison gerrymandering’s wide reach. Continue reading >>>
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