Washblog

I ask because of this sentence in your piece:

if a district's population is one-half prisoners, the resident population of that district would have twice the voting power of other districts in the county.

What gives that power?

It makes no sense to include prison populations in counts made to determine voting districts, as prisoners cannot vote....

Noemie --

It's advantageous to have a large prison in your district because it makes the real population of your district smaller. The prison population may count in the census, but they are not a part of the surrounding community. As a result, you have more access to legislators and more control over your county than you would otherwise.

But if including the prison population doubles the weight of a vote cast near the prison, it also dilutes weight of a vote cast elsewhere in the county by the same percentage. So while including the prison population might be good for some voters, it's bad for the democratic system which is based on the One Person One Vote principle.

That's why in every rural county except for one, when the public learns that prison populations are distorting their local democracy, they rise up and demand that the county legislature draw districts that do not include the prison populations. The trick is making sure that the public knows what questions to ask, hence the Toolkit.

I would expect that the largest impact in Washington State might be in the smaller cities with large prisons, like Monroe, Walla Walla, and Port Orchard, if the city councilors there are from districts rather than at-large? The impact in Walla Walla and Monroe County might also be important as well, depending on how their districts are drawn.

-Peter Wagner
(I wrote the Democracy Toolkit)