The Constitution has a word for those kinds of "jobs".

I don't mean the prison(er) labor. Prisons employee not just guards but doctors and nurses and groundskeepers and secretaries, plumbers, electricians, HR, food service companies... Just like colleges or military bases, prisons are a source of jobs for the surrounding area and can be the only thing keeping them even vaguely economically viable.

Making the slave labor illegal wouldn't get rid of most of the economic/political incentive for prisons.

It’s even worse than that, at least in New York.

The prisons also counted all the people in them as residents, for apportionment of votes, money, and so on.

You would have a rural county where 6,000 people, including 1,500 prison guards, actually live. And then 6,000 prisoners.

Which would count as 12,000 people in terms of congressional and state representation. But only half of them are actually allowed to vote.

Ah, the Five-Fifths Compromise.

The very literal and real truth is that The U.S.A. from the constitution down is a White supremacist country, and it continues to this day. Prison Labor = Slavery, and the Republicans are monopolizing this to their benefit. Until this is fixed... we remain a racist country. We need to continue to progress towards equality, because if we do not, or children will, and will hate us for it. We fought World War I, the War to and all Wars over Fascism, We fought World War II, to end Fascism, and now... we forget. Its shameful, and it will become embarrassing.

> It’s even worse than that, at least in New York.

This is known as prison gerrymandering, although in New York it was made illegal in 2010[0].

However, it's still legal in many other states[1].

[0] https://www.prisonersofthecensus.org/NYS_A9710-D.html

[1] https://www.prisonersofthecensus.org/models/chart.html

The counting makes sense: prisoners, too, require the resources of the locality in which they reside, even if they can't vote at the moment

They should be able to vote though

The lifelong ban does seem arbitrarily harsh and engineered for abuse (anybody subject to taxation should retain voting rights); who benefits from this and how? (It's been 20+ years since my last civics class.)

Racism was the historic angle-- but even if you target a black community and make felons of all the men, they would only comprise a minority of voters in a white district, and it just reduces the number of all eligible voters in an all-black district. Is this a local politics thing (school funding, etc.)?

Or is it just a way to suppress voting by as much of the Left as possible?

The Right are the ones who define all these laws. The Left are the ones who seem positioned to run afoul of them (pro-drugs, pro-abortion, pro-prostitution, etc.), then lose their ability to influence change.

> Racism was the historic angle-- but even if you target a black community and make felons of all the men, they would only comprise a minority of voters in a white district, and it just reduces the number of all eligible voters in an all-black district.

Reducing the number of voters by eliminating a disfavored class from representation while retaining the political power of apportionment that counts the disebfranchised citizens was the whole point of the 3/5 compromise, and mass criminalization plus felon disenfranchisement is its direct replacement.

Also, you maybe want to consider the effect on a mixed-race district where, say, a sufficient minority of whites are sympathetic to black interests that together they would, before selective disenfrnachisement, constitute a majority.

> Is this a local politics thing (school funding, etc.)?

That, too, but its largely a federal politics thing.

> Reducing the number of voters by eliminating a disfavored class from representation while retaining the political power of apportionment that counts the disebfranchised citizens was the whole point of the 3/5 compromise

Thanks-- I [think I] see where you're going but still don't get where this ends. You have a district with a minority of people who can't vote. Yet they are counted among the population.

This directly suppresses presidential votes, but what besides the House benefits from an inflated population of non-voters?

> you maybe want to consider the effect on a mixed-race district where, say, a sufficient minority of whites are sympathetic to black interests that together they would, before selective disenfrnachisement, constitute a majority.

The thought crossed my mind, but the only example I'm familiar with is Atlanta-- a few blue droplets on a red ocean, yet the state is currently represented by two Democratic senators, and the House is split. There's something weird about this but I'm not a political strategist enough to understand what's going on here. Is this where population matters-- density of the metro area outweighing the rest of the state?

> This directly suppresses presidential votes, but what besides the House benefits from an inflated population of non-voters?

Presidential voting power (for the same reason as the House; well, really, as a direct consequence of apportionment of the House).

In the 2020 election in Georgia, 49.24% voted for one party and 49.49% voted for the other. The "blue droplets in a red ocean" is very obvious: the ocean has very few people.

> The thought crossed my mind, but the only example I'm familiar with is Atlanta-- a few blue droplets on a red ocean, yet the state is currently represented by two Democratic senators, and the House is split. There's something weird about this but I'm not a political strategist enough to understand what's going on here. Is this where population matters-- density of the metro area outweighing the rest of the state?

Yes, Atlanta metro is about 60% of the population of the state of Georgia.

> 12,000 people in terms of congressional and state representation. But only half of them are actually allowed to vote

This is egregious.

The Republicans did this for decades, until they could start building prisons in their districts, then they went into hyper-drive, moving as many prisons into Republican districts as they could, and its well documented, and it is completely egregious.

It gets even worse. For purposes of apportionment prisoners are counted in their place of incarceration rather than their domicile. New York lost a congressional seat by 89 people. How many New Yorkers are incarcerated at Fort Dix?

If illegal aliens count for apportionment, why shouldn't prisoners?

Absolutely unconscionable to ever deny someone their right to vote, even during a prison term. There are no exceptions!

If you let criminals vote, you’ll end up with (place your most hated political figure) elected.

So a politician will be elected then?

Snark aside, this is how you systematically disenfranchise minorities. See Florida.

Democracy doesn’t mean only the “deserving” get a vote. In theory.