Felon Disenfranchisement and Redistricting

Rosanna Taormina, who has been coordinating the Penn law review symposium that I will be attending at the end of the week (some draft symposium papers available here), has published a student note, Defying One-Person, One Vote: Prisoners and the “Usual Residence” Principle, 152 U. Pa. L. Rev. 431 (2003). From the introduction:

    The problem this Comment addresses arises when we examine how states conduct redistricting. In most states, redistricting is based on data from the decennial census. For purposes of the census, felons are counted where they are imprisoned, not, for example, where they were arrested or where they once resided. Thus, in states that disenfranchise their prison population, the result of current districting practices will be districts with equal population in theory only. In reality, however, the percentage of eligible voters will vary significantlyacross district lines. Assuming perfect voter turnout, the victorious candidate in a prison system district will have been elected by fewer people than the candidate in a district with no prison. Even considering the fact that voter turnout will vary across districts, an elected official in a no-prison district will effectively be responsible for, and accountable to, more constituents than the official
    whose district contains a large, disenfranchised prison population. The result is the unequal weighting of votes across district lines

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