By The Editors

This month the U.S. Census Bureau issued new guidelines that could significantly alter how inmates in state prisons are counted for the census. That, in turn, could affect whether voting districts across the country gain or lose population in advance of the 2011 Congressional and state legislative redistricting.

Early next year the federal agency identify for each legislative district the number of group quarters, such as prisons, and the number of occupants within them. States would then have the option of counting them in the local population or not.

Legislatures in several states are considering bills that would require prisoners be counted at their last known address for purposes of reapportionment. Such a change would likely favor larger and mostly Democratic cities. Because many, if not most state prisons are located in predominantly rural, white and Republican districts, the change could affect battles for control of state legislatures and Congressional seats.

Representative William Lacy Clay, D-MO, who represents St. Louis and chairs the House of Representatives subcommittee on information policy, census & National Archives, said the new guideline could have an “enormous” impact.

Rep. Clay had long forcefully advocated counting prisoners at their last known address, not where they are incarcerated and had pushed census officials to make the change. After their announcement, he issued a statement commending the agency “for acting to improve accuracy, restore fairness and reverse historic patterns of injustice that have been applied to prisoners for many years. … States and local government will now have the opportunity to do the right thinh and prevent the overrepresentation of areas where prisons are located.” .

The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF) is one of a number of organizations which has pushed for the change. Last month, in TheDefendersOnline, Ryan P. Haygood, Co-Director of LDF’s Political Participation Group, asserted that the Census Bureau’s “current method of counting prisoners violates the basic principle of ‘one person, one vote. … The obvious remedy is that the Census Bureau must change its practice of counting prisoners as residents of the prison communities where they are incarcerated. People housed in prisons should be counted as residents of the communities in which they lived prior to incarceration and to which they will return upon their release.”