Three-fifths of a voter

A quick quiz on democracy and incarceration: what do Pickaway Correctional Institution, Ross Correctional Institution and Chillicothe Correctional Institution have in common, besides being prisons in Ohio?

The answer is that they're all in Ohio House of Representatives district 85. And because the U.S. census counts prisoners in the place where they are incarcerated rather than the place where they lived prior to arrest, it also means that every inmate in those facilities -- about 9 percent of the total population of the district, according to the website Prisoners of the Census – is counted as a resident of the area.

Unlike the other residents, though, the prisoners of district 85 never get to vote...

A decision is also pending from the 2nd Circuit in Muntaqim v. Coombe... [O]ne amicus brief from the National Voting Rights Institute and the Prison Policy Initiative discusses the effect of incarceration on apportionment patterns – a phenomenon the brief describes as being "a striking modern-day parallel to the 'Three-Fifths Clause' of the United States Constitution." The court heard oral argument on that case en banc in June.

via John Elias at ACS Blog.