More states plan to count state prisoners as residents of their home communities, rather than residents of the places where they are incarcerated — a change that would shift political power away from conservative rural areas to more liberal cities during legislative redistricting.
Many inmates hail from neighborhoods in or near cities, but most are incarcerated in small towns and rural areas. Counting prisoners as residents of their hometowns would, for the most part, boost the legislative representation of Democratic-leaning urban areas with large minority populations while diminishing the power of Republican, mostly white rural areas.
New York and Maryland made the change after the 2010 census, and California and Delaware will start with the next redistricting cycle after the 2020 count. Connecticut, Rhode Island and New Jersey could follow suit.
[For more on this story by Tim Henderson, go to https://witnessla.com/counting...cal-power-to-cities/]
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