The Brennan Center for Justice, the New York Civil Liberties Union and a handful of other groups are reminding the Legislature’s task force on reapportionment (LATFOR) that the law still requires them to count prisoners as residents of their home communities.
In a sternly worded letter to LATFOR members, the group warns that unless a judge intervenes, they should not return to the previous practice of counting prisoners as residents of their prison communities – a move that would largely benefit Senate Republicans whose upstate districts are losing population.
“The failure to comply promptly with the law’s requirement that incarcerated persons be reallocated for purposes of redistricting would be a serious violation of legal obligations,” the letter states. “It would gravely infringe upon the voting rights of New York’s citizens for which you could be held accountable.”
The letter is in response to a July 6th LATFOR meeting in which members left unsettled the matter of how prisoners would be counted.
Several Senate Republicans are challenging a law – adopted when the Senate was under Democratic control – that changed the way prisoners are counted, mandating that they be considered residents of their home communities.
