The state’s Legislative Reapportionment Commission — notably its chairman — made the right decision recently in deciding state prisoners should be counted as residents of their home address and not the facility where they are incarcerated. It’s an overdue change to the way prisoners are counted and their impact in determining how legislative districts are drawn.
The 3-2 vote to approve the change came when Chairman Mark Nordenberg, University of Pittsburgh chancellor emeritus, sided with the two Democratic legislative leaders on the commission. That means the nearly 37,000 state inmates who live among the 23 facilities in 19 counties will no longer be considered residents of those communities for the purposes of population counts.
It’s a commonsense change sought by several advocacy groups such as the League of Women Voters of Pennsylvania and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. Their argument was that counting those prisoners as residents unfairly inflated the populations of communities that housed the facilities, most of which are in rural, largely white areas of the state. The end result was that the reapportionment process, which is based on population counts, gave more weight to voters in areas with correctional institutions.
Putting an end to this so-called “prison gerrymandering” was the right decision because those inmates have virtually no input in making decisions in those communities and can’t vote in local elections there.
“When a system holds and counts a person in one place but forces him or her to vote in another, it does create a basic issue of fairness,” Mr. Nordenberg said in announcing the decision.
The change was not without challenge by the two Republican members of the commission, one of whom argued that such a change should be the responsibility of the state Legislature, as was done in 11 other states that took similar action. The commission’s chief counsel, however, said in nine of those states the legislature controls the redistricting process and the other two have independent commissions. Pennsylvania’s legislative redistricting is placed in the hands of the Reapportionment Commission and has the authority to make such a change.
Mr. Nordenberg acknowledged that the decision is not “an ideal resolution” to the issue, but rightly pointed out that a decision “can’t wait for another 10 years” when the next redistricting is done.
The commission’s vote is a small step toward what advocacy groups have been seeking for years — fairly drawn legislative maps.
First Published: September 8, 2021, 4:00 a.m.
