Attempt to undermine win on prison gerrymandering
We recently celebrated the vote by the Legislative Reapportionment Committee to reallocate prison data so that incarcerated persons would be counted in their home communities for the purposes of redistricting. At that hearing Senate Majority Leader Kim Ward introduced a detrimental resolution to exclude any incarcerated person who has more than 10 years left on their minimum sentence. Below listed are a few reasons why your constituents are in opposition to this resolution. -A minimum sentence is not set in stone. Sentences can be changed at any time. An incarcerated person can be released for good behavior, commutation, acquittal on appeal, special programs and other reasons. -No matter when a person is released, the primary issue is lack of representation and lack of access to constituent services. Those who are incarcerated for longer periods of time need those services as much as those who serve a shorter sentence. -No matter the length of sentence, the practice of counting incarcerated people in their places of incarceration inflates the voting power of people living near a prison and dilutes the representation of people in communities whose residents have been sent to prison. We also learned yesterday afternoon that this resolution will be given a vote in an LRC hearing this morning at 10:00 am. I and many other of your constituents are concerned that the vote on this was announced with less than 24 hours notice. We object to this attempt to undermine the redistricting process and urge our state leaders to work on ending prison gerrymandering for the sake of preserving our democracy for all. Thank you for listening to your constituents' concerns,