The reason for this anomaly is the very undemocratic (small d) practice of prison gerrymandering. Prison gerrymandering refers to counting all of the people incarcerated at a prison in the district where the prison is located for purposes of creating district lines, even if they don’t legally reside there, are barred from voting there, and must vote (absentee) from their actual home addresses. District 15 has approximately 1,230 of these incarcerated persons being counted as constituents there.

This skewing has a number of consequences. Specifically, as noted above, it means that Speaker Mattiello and challenger Frias actually have 1,230 fewer constituents they have to reach out to and represent. Although they are treated as residents of District 15 for purposes of carving up that district, these incarcerated persons are not considered residents there for any other meaningful purpose, including for purposes of voting. In fact, the many ACI inmates who remain eligible to vote despite being incarcerated are essentially barred by state law from voting in this House race. Instead, they must vote (by absentee ballot, of course) in the election that is taking place where they previously resided.

There is another impact that flows from this practice: the voting strength of the communities from which the inmates come is diluted, while the political influence of the city residents in which the prison is located is inflated. By inappropriately counting the 1,230 ACI inmates as District 15 residents, every resident of the state not living there has his or her representation diluted by about 8% compared to residents in district 15. Put another way, by virtue of his location, the House Speaker is more powerful than other legislators not just because of his title, but because 92 constituents of his House District have the same influence as 100 residents in almost every other district. (Only neighboring District 20, which also includes portions of the ACI, wields a bigger disproportionate influence.)

In 2013, the ACLU sued to challenge this practice. In a major decision, U.S. District Court Judge Ronald Lagueux agreed that prison gerrymandering violated the one person, one vote requirements of the U.S. Constitution. Unfortunately, earlier this month, the U.S. Court of Appeals in Boston reversed that decision.

As a result, it is now up to elected officials to address the issue. For the past three years, the state Senate has passed a bill that would ban prison gerrymandering, something that four other states and a few hundred municipalities across the country have done in recognition of this problem. Unfortunately, the bill has died in the House in past years. And at the local level, Cranston officials decided it was worth spending taxpayer money (to the tune of $250,000 even before the appeal) rather than make their municipal districts more equitable as so many other localities have voluntarily done.

Once all the votes are counted in the District 15 race on November 8th, we will only be able to speculate what the outcome might have been if the two candidates had to increase their door-knocking to persuade hundreds of additional people (more closely matching the number of constituents that candidates in other districts generally must represent) to vote for them.

We should stop speculating by eliminating its cause. There is no question that Speaker Mattiello cares deeply about his community, just as we are sure Mr. Frias does. Let’s halt the practice of prison gerrymandering so that 1,000 more people can benefit from that care and stewardship, and so that District 15 (and District 20) more fairly represents the same number of residents as other districts.

Steven Frias, a Rhode Island Republican leader and prize winning writer, has announced his candidacy for Representative in District 15, which is currently held by House Speaker Nicholas Mattiello. The race presents a clear choice between Speaker Mattiello, the chief defender of Rhode Island’s failing status quo, and Frias, an articulate advocate for dramatic reforms to make Rhode Island’s economy more prosperous and its government more ethical.

Frias stated, “Rhode Island’s most powerful politician, Speaker Mattielllo, believes Rhode Island is in ‘excellent shape’ and that state ‘government actually works very well.’ Well, I have to disagree. For example, Rhode Island currently has the sixth-worst business-tax climate in the nation according to the nonpartisan Tax Foundation. Further, Rhode Island’s structural budget deficit will grow to over $300 million dollars in a few years according to new budget projections. Moreover, in just the last two months, Rhode Island has lost nearly 4,000 jobs. To make matters worse, in less than two months, members of Mattiello’s House leadership team have become mired in scandal. This is unacceptable.”

Frias continued, “To grow our economy, the cost of doing business in Rhode Island must be significantly reduced. For starters, we should repeal the new tolls, and implement dramatic reductions in Rhode Island’s tax rates to levels below those of its neighboring states, like Massachusetts. To restore public confidence in our state government, we need reforms such as requiring legislative grants to be specifically listed in the budget, a line-item veto, restrictions on fundraising while the General Assembly is in session, requiring the General Assembly to follow open meetings laws, and term limits. It’s time we clean house at the State House!”

[From a press release]

Representatives and members of the RI Tea Party, The Republican Party, the Progressive Democrats of Rhode Island, The Green Party, Direct Action for Rights and Equality, Occupy Providence, The Rhode Island Sierra Club, RI Taxpayers, The Rhode Island Libertarian Party, and the Capital Good Fund stood side by side to take a stand against corporate welfare.

This event was put together by Coalition Radio’s Pat Ford and David Fisher, with help from Lauren Niedel of the Progressive Democrats. Ford acted as emcee for the event, in which 13 speakers and one poet spoke to a crowd of about 80 people. Inside the RICC offices, more than 100 more people attended the meeting where Skeffington and other PawSox owners revealed that they were amenable to negotiating a better deal.

Gina Raimondo essentially rejected the first deal offered, which would have, in the words of more than one speaker, “socialized the risk and privatized the profits” of the new venture.

Pat Ford spoke first, saying that “it is not the role of government to subsidize risk for private enterprise.”

Lauren Niedel of the Rhode Island Progressive Democrats put the deal into stark economic relief: As Rhode Island prepares to carve $90 million out of Medicaid, how can we justify giving away millions of dollars to millionaires?

Andrew Posner, executive director of the Capital Good Fund, said that “every day I look at families that are hungry, that are poor, that don’t have jobs… that’s what we should be spending our time and money talking about.”

The Tea Party’s Mike Puyana said that the deal is “something called crony corporatism, it’s as far from equality under the law as it’s possible to get.”

“I don’t think I ever imagined that i was going to be at a rally with the Tea Party on the same side,” said Fred Ordonez of DARE, “but here we are!”

On a more serious note, Ordonez said, “Every time we see a huge development get all kinds of tax breaks and tax subsidies, the poor communities in providence get poorer and poorer.”

Larry Girouard, of Rhode island Taxpayers, said that a new stadium downtown is the last thing we need to spur economic growth. “The issue is taxes, regulation, infrastructure. This is just a diversion from the real problems.

The Green Party, represented by Greg Gerritt, brought up some of the environmental concerns, such as the risks of moving the new sewer line. “When you do things like that, you can do it right, but often it introduces more leaks into a system.”

“The state of Rhode Island has no business taking money out of the hands of taxpayers and giving it to millionaires,” said Gina Catalano of the Rhode Island Republican Party, “to be expected to make that investment with zero return, is ludicrous.”

Representing the Sierra Club, Asher Schofield, owner of the small business Frog and Toad, hit the crowd with a baseball metaphor, and tried to inspire us all towards something better.

“Providence is not a minor league city. We are what we dream ourselves to be. What we want to be. And we want to be major league. These are antiquated notions, the idea of public financing of private enterprise. This [deal] is not the grand notion that we need to have as a city moving forward… These minor league aspirations are beneath us.”

This deal, says Rhode Island Libertarian Party leader Mike Rollins, “is the exact opposite of everything we stand for.”

Occupy Providence’s Randall Rose made excellent points, and even read from a textbook about how bad it is for cities to invest money in minor league baseball teams. Rose read from the book Minor League Baseball and Local Economic Development, noting that, “there have been books on this, the scam is run so often.”

“The economic impact of a minor league team,” read Rose, “is not sufficient to justify the relatively large public expenditure for a minor league stadium.”

Steve Frias of the Republican Party, noted that the assembled crowd was comprised of people with “different viewpoints, but we all agree that this is a stupid deal.”

Roland Gauvin, an independent political activist, promised politicians who support such efforts that “a vote for this is the last time [politicians] will ever be voting, because we will vote them out of office.” Gauvin had especially choice words for Speaker of the House Nicholas Mattiello, saying, “And I will be willing to go to any district in Rhode island, starting in Mattiello’s district, and work my way down.”

Finally, before the crowd moved inside to join the RICC meeting already in progress, Cathy Orloff lead the crowd in a participatory poem against the stadium, with five baseball references built in.

Noting that he was asking a “subjective question” Frias asked Brown “Have good amendments come of constitutional conventions in the past?”

Brown, who has only studied the 1986 convention in Rhode Island, answered, “Nothing that came out of the 1986 convention was worth it. No.”

“Not the Ethics Commission amendment?” pressed Frias.

“No, and that’s an interesting one,” countered Brown, “The Ethics Commission was one of the few, so-called ‘good government’ reforms that passed the convention and here we are a few years later, complaining… we need another convention in order to correct the language that was passed in 1986.”

Frias did not like Brown’s answer. “Would you agree,” he asked, “that the reason we are trying to change the language in the amendment is due to a [State] Supreme Court decision that was enunciated at the end of the last decade in regards to Senator Irons?”

“No,” answered Brown, “I would say it’s because of the ambiguity in the language [of the amendment] that was passed by the 1986 convention.”

Now visibly annoyed, Frias, who obviously feels that the Supreme Court decision was a case of judicial overreach and not a problem inherent in the language of the amendment, concluded, “Okay, thank you. It’s a legal interpretation.”

You can watch it here:

Also of interest was Brown’s description of the “bundling” of amendments. The 1986 Con-Con ultimately approved 25 amendments for consideration by voters. Because that many questions could not fit on the ballots, some amendments were bundled together, meaning that they had to be approved or rejected as a group. Of course, since the delegates to a Constitutional Convention are entirely self-directed, there are no limitations on the number of amendments that can be proposed.