Reports Says Prison Gerrymandering Gives Unfair Voting Power To Four Florida House Districts

By Mitch Perry, Florida Phoenix

October 16, 2025

While both Blue and Red states (including Florida) are undertaking mid-decade congressional redistricting ahead of the 2026 election, a report criticizes the way the U.S. Census and state governments count prison populations for redistricting.

It’s called prison gerrymandering, and the study from the Prison Policy Initiative says that four state House districts in Florida illustrate how the decennial U.S. Census Bureau’s policy of counting prisoners where they are incarcerated instead of where they hail from distorts the process and gives some residents a louder voice in government.

The issue is not new to Florida counties with prison populations.

In 2015, the ACLU of Florida filed a lawsuit challenging district maps for county commission and school board elections in Jefferson County in North Florida, alleging the incarcerated population made up more than 42% of the voting age population in one district. A federal judge ruled in 2016 that the five county commission districts violated the constitutional principle of “one person, one vote.”

In the aftermath of that decision, six North Florida counties and two North Florida school districts avoided prison gerrymandering when drawing up their local districts after the 2020 U.S. Census, according to the institute. The report says that seven Florida counties and three school districts avoided prison-based gerrymandering after the 2010 Census.

At least 15 states have passed laws or adopted guidance modifying how incarcerated persons are counted and allocated during the redistricting process, according to a 2024 report from the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Florida House Democrats raised the issue during the 2021 legislative hearings regarding congressional and legislative redistricting in the state. The complaint didn’t move GOP lawmakers who were in charge of the process.

The four districts listed in the report are mostly in rural areas :

House District 7, which encompasses Gulf, Liberty, Franklin, Wakulla, Taylor, Dixie, Lafayette, Suwannee, Hamilton, and parts of Leon and Jefferson counties. The report says 10% of the district’s population is made up of the incarcerated.

House District 10, which includes Columbia, Baker, Union, Bradford, and part of Alachua counties. The report says 8% of the district’s population is made up of the incarcerated.

House District 5, which includes Walton, Holmes, Washington, Jackson, and Calhoun counties. The report says that 7% of the district consists of incarcerated individuals.

House District 52, which includes Sumter and parts of Hernando counties, where the report says that 5% of the district’s population is incarcerated. The largest prison facility in the district is Federal Corrections Complex Coleman, the largest federal prison complex in the nation, with inmates from all across the country.

The report says that only about 6% of the population at the Coleman Complex comes from Florida, “which means out of the 6,285 people held by the Bureau of Prisons at FCC Coleman, only about 371 people are likely Florida residents.” The report adds that most of those 371 people aren’t likely to be actual residents of House District 52.

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