FDPA And LWVPA Testify Against Prison Gerrymandering

For Immediate Release

Yesterday, Fair Districts PA (FDPA) Chair Carol Kuniholm testified at the Pennsylvania capitol building on behalf of FPDA and the League of Women Voters of Pennsylvania, advocating for an end to prison gerrymandering in Pennsylvania. Prison gerrymandering is the practice of counting incarcerated individuals as residents of the areas where they are imprisoned, instead of their home counties, when election district lines are drawn. This distorts the equal representation goal of legislative redistricting across the Commonwealth, and disenfranchises voters from districts without prisons.  

Alongside Khalif Ali of Common Cause PA, Kuniholm asked the Legislative Reapportionment Commission (LRC), a group of lawmakers that spearhead the redistricting process, to reallocate prison data to count incarcerated persons in their home communities.  She spoke on behalf of the more than 100,000 PA citizens who have signed a petition to reform the redistricting process, the 60,000 citizens who receive and act on our regular redistricting emails, and the thousands of volunteers from all parts of Pennsylvania who have presented over 1000 informational meetings on redistricting in the past five years to over 40,000 people.

Said Kuniholm, “our Pennsylvania constitution requires that districts be compact and contiguous, and unless absolutely necessary, keep counties, cities, boroughs, townships and wards intact. It also requires free and equal elections and puts a high value on the ability of citizens to alter and reform their government.”

The Census count also violates the principle of one person / one vote, and the free and equal elections clause in the PA constitution. Given Pennsylvania’s high levels of incarceration and relatively small district populations, the current count dramatically enhances the voting power of citizens in districts containing state prisons, while significantly diluting the vote of communities most impacted by mass incarceration.

The League of Women Voters of Pennsylvania calls for an end to prison gerrymandering across the Commonwealth and asks the LRC to adjust its practices when drawing maps this year.  

More information about prison gerrymandering can be found on the Fair Districts PA website.