Prisoners of the Census

[Asgaya Dihi]

It's been a while since I posted much here so with the election season underway I want to make sure we don't forget something. A great web page to source what I'm telling you and to help find ways to fight it is this one. http://www.prisonersofthecensus.org/

There are a lot of angles to the drug war and all are important in their own way but one in particular seems to almost never be talked about in spite of being one of the biggest obstacles to change. Manipulation of the census. How does it effect elections and the voting? It's a huge angle too few are aware of and of those who are aware many don't talk enough about it, and I do think it changes results.

Statistics as of June 30, 2006 from Prison and Jail Inmates at Midyear 2006, put the number of young black men between 25 and 29 years of age who are currently behind bars at almost one in eight. The overall rate including all ages and both sexes is 2,468 per 100k as opposed to 409 per 100k for whites. That is verifiable and can be sourced. http://www.prisonsucks.com/

Now the part that really changes election results. What happens to those young people, of any race? When the next census is taken they are now counted as living in the town they are confined in. When it's time to redistrict for the House prison and jail towns look huge on the books in spite of most of the population being ineligible to vote, in fact being confined. That gives them a larger citizenry base to establish their representative power and strips that representation from the homes the inmates will be released to and where their families still live.

Small towns consisting largely of guards and their families now vote with the power of a much larger community and on the backs of their inmates while poor areas which were challenged to start with are stripped of representation. If a way to change the system is through the vote then this seems to be gaming the system and stacking the vote to me. We need to be more aware of this, we need to talk about it, and above all we need to fix it.

[padia]

1. I completely agree

living here in the central valley of CA we have what seems to be @ least 2 prisons per county & this is the repug strong hold because of the population. Corcoran a small farming town on the west side of the valley and in Kings county has maybe 10k residents just outside of town on the south side are 2 state prison 1 which houses Charles Manson. These 2 prisons match if not beat the actual residents. Guess what until the prison employees moved in, this was a traditionally dem demographic