Federal judge finds Jefferson County’s ‘prison gerrymandering’ unconstitutional
• You may have heard of gerrymandering after Florida’s Legislature was caught manipulating congressional boundaries to favor incumbents, but have you ever heard of prison gerrymandering? It’s when incarcerated prisoners who can’t vote are counted as residents by state and local officials when drawing electoral maps. The NAACP’s Legal Defense and Educational Fund says the practice artificially inflates the population and political influence of districts where prisons are located. A federal judge ruled last week that a North Florida county must redraw its voting districts after finding that officials unconstitutionally gerrymandered districts to include state prisoners as residents. Civil liberties groups filed a lawsuit on behalf of residents against Jefferson County, alleging officials counted about 1,100 non-voting Jefferson Correction Institution inmates …
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