Prison-based Gerrymandering

According to the 2000 census, Clallam County, Washington had 545 black residents. Mason County had 587, and Walla Walla County had 930. However, more than half of those people weren't actual residents in 2000. They were prisoners. And because of the way the census was done in 2000, rural areas across the U.S. were able to take advantage of our huge prison population (which is disproportionately black) in order to gain more leverage when it came time to draw up voting districts. Grits For Breakfast posts a link to this interactive tool for finding what percentage of the census was made up of incarcerated individuals for any county in the United States. When compared to other states, Washington state is really not that bad. Texas has 11 counties where over 60% of the black residents of the county are prisoners. And it's not just a red state phenomenon either. New York has 6 and Pennsylvania has 8. It's not hard to see what kind of advantage this has given to the GOP in recent years when it comes to voter representation at both the state and federal level.