Census Bureau’s Counting of Prisoners Benefits Some Rural Voting Districts:

Concerns about so-called prison-based gerrymandering have grown as the number of inmates around the nation has ballooned. Similar disparities have been identified in upstate New York, Tennessee and Wisconsin.
Critics say the census should count prisoners in the district where they lived before they were incarcerated.
…
Prof. James A. Gardner of the University at Buffalo Law School, said that because “prisoners don’t want to be there, leave at the first opportunity, and there’s no chance they can vote, it is taking advantage of a completely inert population for the purpose of sneaking out extra political power.”
The Prison Policy Initiative found 21 counties across the country where at least one in five people, according to the Census Bureau’s count, were actually inmates from another county.

This kind of distortion isn’t surprising, as the many layers of our system contain gross population distortions (I’m looking at you US Senate). This type of distortion is directly stealing political power away from urban areas and shifting it to rural areas (where the prisons are). That the current state-by-state solution is being undertaken instead of a coordinated Federal solution is certainly an Equal Protection suit waiting to happen along the lines of
Bush v Gore (hello, USSC, thanks for opening that can of worms up).