As Michigan's redistricting panel prepares to approve new legislative boundaries this month, some activists say proposed maps give rural areas outsized clout because of how inmate populations are counted. Even though the roughly 35,000 people serving sentences in Michigan prisons can't vote, they are counted as residents of prisons where they are held for purposes of representation. Opponents call that "prison gerrymandering" because it inflates the population and power of smaller communities. Activists want inmates to follow the lead of Pennsylvania and count inmates as residents of their home address, which are more likely to be urban areas like Detroit. "Districts where they're incarcerated get more representation white rural districts, whereas urban districts that have more people of color tend to lose representation and tend to have just less of a voice in their government," said Mike Wessler, communications director for the Prison Policy I
Advocates call it ‘prison gerrymandering’ and say urban cities are denied truly fair representation because inmates are counted as residents of their prisons. Others say it's not so simple.
The state lawmakers charged with redrawing Pennsylvania’s congressional and legislative districts may soon do something not seen in the commonwealth’s recent history: use two significantly different sets of data to draw state and federal election maps.