The Second Circuit’s VRA decision on felon disenfranchisement (see Ethan’s post) brings to mind the fact that even as prisoners are disenfranchised, they are also used to boost the census count (and therefore the electoral weight) of the district in which they are incarcerated. Professor Spencer Overton, George Washington U., has blogged previously about this phenomenon, raising the legal question of how a person who is not permitted to vote can fairly be used to enhance the voting power in a district in which s/he is involuntarily committed. For an argument that counting non-voting prisoners this way is comparable to the infamous “Three-Fifths Clause,” see this amicus brief from the National Voting Rights Institute and the Prison Policy Center.
Although I am no expert in election law, my father has been arguing for decades (thus during my formative years) that states should receive representation in the electoral college based on how many residents actually vote, rather than how many happen to live there. Without necessarily agreeing (sorry Dad), it occurs to me that felon disenfranchisement highlights even deeper tensions in how we count non-voters. The census count of non-voting prisoners in prison districts (rather than in their home districts) transfers electoral power away from people who are literally barred from the political process, and gives it instead to different political communities who have an interest in keeping prisoners incarcerated.
Posted by SashaNatapoff on May 5, 2006 at 02:16 PM
Comments
Yes, because whether someone is incarcerated is totally arbitrary, has nothing to do with their own conduct, and is only related to the “interest” of “different political communities” in disenfranchising them. Yep, putting people in jail is just like slavery.
Posted by: James | May 7, 2006 1:49:42 AM