‘Prison gerrymandering:’
How inmates are helping the Texas GOP maintain its power
On paper, the Tennessee Colony area looks like a small but growing East Texas community of 16,000 residents.
But in reality, it’s not much more than a country road intersection anchored by a feed store, a church and a shuttered post office.
Locals say the biggest draws are Taco Tuesdays at the gas station and the monthly meeting at the Masonic lodge.
Only about 2,000 people actually live in this part of rural Anderson County.
The other 13,344 are prisoners here.
Nearly a quarter of a million people were incarcerated in Texas when the Census was taken last year.
When lawmakers redrew the state’s voting maps this fall, these
inmates were counted in the prison towns where they were locked up, rather than where they lived beforehand.
-- email Dallas Morning News
|