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Prison Politics: Should Prisoners Be Counted for Voting Purposes

January 6th, 2016 by Mike Vasilinda

A Federal court in the state Capitol is considering what could be a landmark case when it comes to who represents you in local government. As Mike Vasilinda tells us, the case boils down to whether it’s fair to count state prisoners when creating local districts.

Rural Jefferson County has a five county commission districts, each with 2900 residents. One of the districts includes this state prison.

There are about 1200 inmates here. They make up about 43 percent of the people who live in this county commission district. People In the other four districts say it isn’t fair.

Whether or not to count local prisoners is left up to the local governments. The US Supreme Court has said it’s okay to count prisoners as long as they don’t make up more than ten percent of the population.

Residents here, along with the ACLU and the FLorida Justice Institute are suing to have the prisoners excluded. Randall Berg of the FL. Justice Institute says prisoners don’t vote and shouldn’t be counted for political purposes.

Q: “what happens when they are counted?”

A:”what happens is they dilute the voting impact of the people in the other four districts of Jefferson County.”

The judge repeatedly used the phrase Representational Nexus, wanting to know how local Goverment benefits the prisoners. Jerry Curington represents the Jefferson County School Board.

“Inmates deal with Correctional officers every day. Twenty-four seven. They can’t escape them, and it’s important to them that they have a good school system so these officers understand constitutional principles and the rights of prisoners.”

Seven of FLORIDA’S counties have chosen not to count prisoners. Most do. A decision is expected in February and if it goes against the county, dozens of other small counties could find themselves having to redraw their county commission and school board boundaries. ( prisoners in the state prison call Jefferson County home. the other nearly 1200 do not.

The County did tell the judge that if he rules against them, the small county may not be able to appeal the decision.