“You Can’t Vote, But You Still Count… Somewhere Else.”

When someone is incarcerated, they lose the right to vote. But during the census, they’re still counted, not where they’re from, but where they’re locked up.

And that simple detail is a political power grab.

Most incarcerated people come from urban areas. But prisons are usually built in rural districts, and that’s where they’re counted. Their bodies inflate the political power of the district that holds them, not the one that raised them.

It’s called prison gerrymandering, and it lets rural areas gain representation and resources by warehousing people from somewhere else.

The result?

• A person in prison can’t vote.
• Their hometown loses representation.
• The rural district gets political power, without earning it.

That’s not democracy.
That’s incarceration without participation.

What can be done?

A few states have ended the practice by counting people where they actually live, their home address, not their cell. But most haven’t. Because power is hard to give up, even when it was never yours to begin with.

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