{"id":88795,"date":"2021-12-18T15:12:21","date_gmt":"2021-12-18T15:12:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/?p=88795"},"modified":"2021-12-18T15:12:25","modified_gmt":"2021-12-18T15:12:25","slug":"prison-gerrymandering-how-inmates-are-helping-the-texas-gop-maintain-its-power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/?p=88795","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;\u2018Prison gerrymandering\u2019: How inmates are helping the Texas GOP maintain its power&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.dallasnews.com\/news\/investigations\/2021\/12\/15\/prison-gerrymandering-how-inmates-are-helping-the-texas-gop-maintain-its-power\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">D<\/a><a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.dallasnews.com\/news\/investigations\/2021\/12\/15\/prison-gerrymandering-how-inmates-are-helping-the-texas-gop-maintain-its-power\/\" target=\"_blank\">allas Morning News:<\/a> &#8220;Nearly a quarter of a million people were incarcerated in Texas when the census was taken last year. When lawmakers redrew the state\u2019s voting maps this fall, these inmates were counted in the prison towns where they were locked up, rather than where they lived beforehand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A&nbsp;<em>Dallas Morning News&nbsp;<\/em>analysis of census and prison data found that this practice, which opponents call \u201cprison gerrymandering,\u201d inflates the political power of Republican districts while draining clout from Democratic strongholds. It also makes more conservative, rural areas of the state look larger and more diverse than they truly are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Republicans say the maps are legal and fair. They argue there isn\u2019t a viable alternative for counting prisoners, and changing that won\u2019t shift the balance of power in Texas to Democrats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But<em>\u00a0The News<\/em>\u00a0found the state\u2019s new legislative maps would look significantly different if Texas stopped this practice. Reallocating prisoners to the places where they were charged would cause nearly 1 in 5 counties \u2014 most of which went for Donald Trump last year \u2014 to lose population to more urban, liberal areas. Not counting prisoners at all would throw nearly three dozen House districts out of population boundaries, making them subject to court challenge.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dallas Morning News: &#8220;Nearly a quarter of a million people were incarcerated in Texas when the census was taken last year. When lawmakers redrew the state\u2019s voting maps this fall, these inmates were counted in the prison towns where they were locked up, rather than where they lived beforehand. A&nbsp;Dallas Morning News&nbsp;analysis of census and&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-88795","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-newsstory"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88795","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=88795"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88795\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":88796,"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88795\/revisions\/88796"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=88795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=88795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=88795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}