Citizens Union Announces Support for “Prisoners of the Census Bill”
Citizens Union became the latest organization to announce its support for a bill in the state legislature that will address a longstanding disparity in the manner in which districts for the state legislature are apportioned. The bills, authored by State Senator Eric Schneiderman and Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries, require that prisoners be counted at their last residency prior to incarceration rather than at the prison where they reside. It is legislation that has been championed by the DuBois Bunche Center.
“To count prisoners in districts in which they can’t even vote and use their presence for the purposes of political representation is nothing more than a political game of three card monte. Like the game, the prisoners get shuffled around and someone else gains at their expense,” said Citizens Union Executive Director Dick Dadey. Mr. Dadey said further that, “This bill correctly aligns prisoners with representatives from the place they previously lived instead of the prison where they serve their sentence, which is a fairer and more accurate way of counting them for the purposes of reapportionment.”
