CITIZEN ACTION OF NEW YORK
For Immediate Release: April 9, 2010
New Action Website, With Blog, Fights to End Prison-Based Gerrymandering in New York
Coalition Works to End Decade-Old Practice and Restore Democracy to New York’s Redistricting
Albany, NY – The statewide Coalition to End Prison-Based Gerrymandering today announced it’s new website, CorrectTheCount.org, which will serve as the community action hub in support of changing how the State counts people in prison for the purpose of legislative redistricting.
The current system of counting people in prison as residents of their place of incarceration violates the democratic principle of ‘one person, one vote,’ and threatens the equality of representation for every New Yorker.
CorrectTheCount.org includes a blog authored by various coalition partners, online actions allowing the public to voice their support of the legislation, and a “citizen whip count” designed to encourage New Yorkers to call their representatives about the bills and report back on what was said.
The coalition has also created a Facebook page at http://facebook.com/correctthecount for community discussion and information sharing.
S6725, sponsored by Senator Eric T. Schneiderman, and A9834, sponsored by Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries, would instruct the Legislative Task Force on Demographic Research and Reapportionment to amend Census population data with data from the Department of Corrections for incarcerated individuals to reallocate the prison population to their home communities for the purpose of redistricting.
Because the legislation only changes the way New York State uses Census data for the purpose of redistricting, it will have no impact on any funding related to Census data.
Under New York State law, counties are given the discretion to choose the population base used for county-level legislative redistricting. Currently, most of New York’s counties with large prisons reject the system of prison-based gerrymandering. Thirteen New York counties correct the Census count, removing the prison population before redistricting to avoid vote dilution in their districts.
The Coalition to End Prison-Based Gerrymandering in New York is comprised of dozens of organizations from every region of the State.
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