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The 2022 Election is over. Wisconsin turns to redistricting (again).

 
 
Reply Thu 24 Nov, 2022 08:03 pm
The 2022 Election is over. Wisconsin turns to redistricting
(again).



Published November 23, 2022


Quote:
Depending on the results of the upcoming Wisconsin Supreme Court election, the state could get fair maps, or it could be stuck with perhaps the country’s worst gerrymander for the rest of the decade.


In the recent midterm election, Democrats won three of five statewide races, including two of the three most important, governor and attorney general.

But using their newly gerrymandered maps in 2022, (Republicans) expanded their large majorities in the state legislature, securing a 2/3 supermajority in the state Senate, and falling two seats short in the Assembly.

“A disaster,” is how UW-Stevens Point political science professor emeritus Ed Miller described the state’s freshly gerrymandered political districts.

“One of the most successful gerrymanders in the country,” added Alisa Von Hagel, a political science professor at UW-Superior.

And UW-Madison political science professor Barry Burden said the midterm elections validated a troubling perception about the state of Wisconsin’s democracy.

“The 2022 election results have confirmed that the partisan makeup of the state legislature has little to do with voters’ preferences,” he said. “Despite all of the statewide elections being decided by narrow margins and slightly favoring Democratic candidates, large Republican majorities in the state legislature actually got larger.”

But big changes to the political districts in Wisconsin are still possible in the near future, experts say. The most crucial determining factor likely will come down to who wins next year’s election on April 4 for the open seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

Wisconsin Supreme Court Election

When it was time to redraw the political districts in 2021, which states are required to do after the Census every ten years, Wisconsin state government was divided, as it remains today.

With a Democratic governor’s veto in place, the GOP-controlled legislature couldn’t pass their preferred maps, as they had in 2011, when Republican Scott Walker was the state’s executive.

So the 2021 redistricting saga landed in the courts, as it had several times in previous decades.

Those previous legal proceedings ended with the Wisconsin Supreme Court declining to rule on political district boundaries, leaving the map-making to the federal courts, which usually hired an expert to draw them with as little partisan skew as possible.

But in 2021, the right-wing majority on the state Supreme Court decided to keep the power to make rulings on political districts. The court then decided to require a “least-change” approach to drawing the present maps.

That approach is common in courts across the country, said Robert Yablon, an associate professor at the UW-Madison law school, who focuses on political and election law.

But it was “virtually unheard of” to enact a least change redistricting method when the previous maps, which would provide the basis for the new ones, had a strong partisan lean, as Wisconsin’s did, Yablon noted.

Ultimately, Wisconsin got state legislative maps that heavily favored Republicans, a point the election results validated.

But a win in the 2023 election by the liberal candidate for that open Wisconsin Supreme Court seat would flip the right-leaning 4-3 majority to a left-leaning one.

“Democrats and good government groups are hopeful that a change in the court’s ideological composition will provide an opportunity to challenge the current districts as partisan gerrymanders,” Burden said.

A newly configured court might be more willing to entertain litigation arguing that the previous round of redistricting was conducted illegally, and needs to be redone, Yablon said.

If a majority of the justices were to view that argument favorably, the court then could hire an expert to draw the districts in as nonpartisan way as possible, or ask the political parties to redraw maps and submit them again.

“I think there is a reasonable likelihood that that could happen if the composition of the court changes,” Yablon said.

If history is an indication, the U.S. Supreme Court would be unlikely to intervene in the Wisconsin Supreme Court decision. Although the U.S. high court intervened in 2022 in a case challenging Wisconsin’s maps on racial gerrymandering, the court repeatedly has declined to weigh in on political gerrymandering cases.

Whichever party wins the 2023 Wisconsin Supreme Court open seat, liberals will have to defend a seat in 2025, when the left-wing justice Ann Walsh Bradley is up for reelection. The seats of two other right-wing justices are up for reelection in 2026 and 2027.

One outcome appears certain, Burden said: Wisconsin Supreme Court races “will attract a ton of interest and money because the court has become the venue where so many of the most controversial issues in the state are settled.”

Other possible changes to Wisconsin’s political districts

In 2022, after a protracted battle in the state house and courts, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ultimately enacted state legislative maps drawn by Republicans. But those maps removed a majority Black district in the state Assembly. That could be legally problematic under the Voting Rights Act, which aims to protect discriminatory voting practices. It could present an opportunity to challenge the maps based on racial gerrymandering.

However, “given where the U.S. Supreme Court is now on these issues, that kind of case would probably be an uphill battle,” Yablon said.

The end of gerrymandering also could come from a Congress controlled by Democrats, who generally support enacting nonpartisan redistricting across the U.S. But Democrats must have large enough majorities in Congress to do that, and Republicans just gained a narrow majority in the House in the 2022 elections.

Another possible antidote to political gerrymandering exists in The Fair Representation Act, which would eliminate single-member districts and replace them with multi-member districts across the country, drawn by an independent commission. Introduced by U.S. Rep. Donald Beyer (D-VA), the bill also would launch ranked-choice voting, which allows voters to rank candidates based on their preference rather than voting for one. Maine and Alaska use the system, and Nevada has taken a big step towards using it.

The bill has no Republican sponsors, giving it a very low likelihood of passage in the near term.



https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/the-2022-election-is-over-wisconsin-turns-to-redistricting-again/ar-AA14t4Sa?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=8f222f5418894d55802fd8f7d0da3343
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Real Music
 
  2  
Reply Fri 25 Nov, 2022 10:31 pm
Wisconsin Gerrymander Fight Turns to State Supreme Court

https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a41928007/wisconsin-gerrymander/
0 Replies
 
Real Music
 
  2  
Reply Tue 4 Apr, 2023 08:07 pm
For the first time in 15 years, liberals win control
of the Wisconsin Supreme Court



Published April 4, 2023


Quote:
MILWAUKEE, Wis. – Democrats have scored a major off-year election victory in Wisconsin, winning the state's open supreme court seat and flipping control of the court to liberals for the first time in 15 years.

Milwaukee County Judge Janet Protasiewicz won the hotly contested race for the Wisconsin Supreme Court, according to a race call by The Associated Press, defeating former state Supreme Court Justice Dan Kelly. Spending in the campaign shattered the previous national record for a state supreme court election.

The win by Protasiewicz comes at a pivotal time for the court, and for the Democratic voters who carried her to office. Justices are all but certain to hear a challenge to Wisconsin's pre-Civil War abortion ban, and with a liberal majority, they're likely to consider a lawsuit that could overturn Wisconsin's Republican-drawn legislative maps.

Barring the unexpected, the victory also assures that liberals will hold a majority on the court ahead of next year's presidential election, when Wisconsin — the perennial swing state — is expected to again be pivotal in the race for the White House. If election lawsuits are filed in state court, Protasiewicz will be one of the seven justices who have the final say.

Democrats' high hopes

Should the court redraw the maps and give Democrats a better chance of winning races for the legislature, they hope they could finally push the state's political trajectory to the left. The court could also potentially redraw Wisconsin's congressional map, where Republicans currently hold six out of eight U.S House seats in an otherwise 50-50 state.

Protasiewicz was born and raised on Milwaukee's south side, spending 25 years as a prosecutor in the Milwaukee County District Attorney's office and most of the last decade as a judge.

While she never promised to rule one way or another on cases that come before the Supreme Court, Protasiewicz was especially open about her politics during the campaign. On the issue of abortion, she said she believed women have a right to choose. When it came to redistricting, she called the state's Republican-drawn legislative maps "rigged."

Her campaign also relied more than any in history on the Democratic Party of Wisconsin's financial support, so much so that Protasiewicz vowed to recuse herself from cases involving the state party once she takes office.

Kelly's loss and the money

Kelly downplayed his political views, but he brought a long Republican resume to the race. He was originally appointed to the court by former Republican Gov. Scott Walker in 2016. Most of Kelly's career was spent as an attorney. In 2012, he defended Wisconsin's Republican-drawn legislative maps in federal court. In 2020, after Kelly lost his first election, he returned to private practice, where his clients included both the state and national Republican parties.

Kelly's biggest financial backers included Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce and a group called Fair Courts America, which is funded by GOP megadonor Richard Uihlein. Together, they spent more than $10 million on ads criticizing sentences handed down by Protasiewicz as a judge in Milwaukee County.

While money from Kelly and conservative groups came in heavy during the closing weeks of the campaign, Protasiewicz was able to counter with a fundraising haul that was previously unheard of in a judicial race, raising more than $14 million this year. The bulk of that money came in transfers from the state Democratic Party.

The race shattered the previous national record for spending in a state Supreme Court race. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, the old record of $15.2 million was set in a 2004 race for the Illinois Supreme Court. According to the center's tracking, nearly $29 million had been spent on political ads in Wisconsin's race. Another running tally by the Wisconsin political news site WisPolitics found total spending on the race had hit $45 million.

Protasiewicz will take office on Aug. 1 for a term that runs until 2033. Barring the unexpected, the next chance conservatives have to flip the court back will be in 2025.


https://www.npr.org/2023/04/04/1167815077/wisconsin-supreme-court-election-results-abortion-voting-protasiewicz-kelly
izzythepush
 
  2  
Reply Wed 5 Apr, 2023 01:49 am
@Real Music,
The loser was full of sour grapes.

His speech was absolutely disgusting.

This is a victory for Freedom over Fascism.
Real Music
 
  2  
Reply Wed 5 Apr, 2023 03:27 am
@izzythepush,
1. Yeah. I know exactly what you mean.

2. I agree with you.

3. I am obviously quite happy about the election results

4.. Yes indeed, Freedom won and fascism lost.

5. I saw a portion of the loser's speech.

6. The loser showed absolutely no class.

7. He showed himself to be a sore loser and a real piece of ****.
izzythepush
 
  2  
Reply Wed 5 Apr, 2023 03:46 am
@Real Music,
I didn't see any of it, I read some of his remarks on here.

American politics seems to be getting nastier.

We have a similar level of denial over here.

In the same way that Trumpies refuse to see his criminality, Government Ministers refuse to see that Brexit is to blame for 99% of the crap we're going through right now.
0 Replies
 
izzythepush
 
  1  
Reply Wed 5 Apr, 2023 08:16 am
Congratulations to Judge Janet Protasiewicz who looks a lot like UK TV chef Delia Smith.
0 Replies
 
Real Music
 
  2  
Reply Sun 5 Nov, 2023 01:10 pm
Republicans have ruled Wisconsin for a decade – but a court decision
could change that.



Published Oct 27, 2023


Quote:
Lynn Carey, a retired nurse with a double lung transplant, has spent years trying to get Wisconsin lawmakers to improve healthcare. Carey organized voters in support of the Affordable Care Act back in 2009. Since its passage, she has pushed to get her Republican representatives in the state legislature to expand Medicaid coverage to its poorest residents.

The idea has been overwhelmingly popular in Wisconsin: a 2019 poll showed 70% of voters in the state supported it. But Medicaid expansion hasn’t gone anywhere – even after Democrats won back Wisconsin’s governorship in 2018.

Republicans still hold near-supermajorities in both chambers of the legislature, and have shown no sign of compromise on this issue or many others popular with most Wisconsinites. Their legislative majorities are virtually impenetrable, cemented by Republican-drawn district lines that have guaranteed Republicans control of the legislature even in years where Democrats received more votes statewide. “We don’t have competitive districts where people have to listen to their constituents,” Carey said.

That could change soon.

In early October the Wisconsin supreme court agreed to bypass lower courts and hear a case seeking to strike down the legislative maps. The maps are so tilted in favor of Republicans, the plaintiffs in the case argue, that they violate the Wisconsin constitution’s guarantee of free speech and association. Liberals won a 4-3 majority on the court in April, and are widely expected to rule that the maps are unconstitutional. Oral arguments in the case are set for 21 November.

If the current maps are overturned in favor of new, more competitive ones, it’s likely to shrink the Republican advantage in the legislature from a supermajority to a narrow one – and give Democrats a fighting chance at winning control. That could transform politics in Wisconsin, forcing Republicans to consider supporting issues that have broad bipartisan support like Medicaid expansion and marijuana legalization that have been stymied by the legislature for more than a decade.

“The party majorities are sufficiently large that the legislature can get away with being completely unresponsive to anything a majority of voters want,” said Ken Mayer, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin – Madison. “If you can’t lose, you don’t have to care. If you run the risk of losing, based on not caring, you will start to care.”

The last gasps of a gerrymandered legislature

With their power threatened, Republicans are scrambling to preserve it. Janet Protasiewicz, a Milwaukee judge, won a seat on the state supreme court in April by 11 points, a landslide in Wisconsin politics. GOP lawmakers have since threatened to impeach her unless she agreed to recuse herself from weighing in on the case, arguing that she had prejudged the case because she called the maps “rigged” during her campaign. She declined to do so earlier this month. Wisconsin law allows for impeachment of an official for “corrupt conduct in office” or “commission of a crime or misdemeanor”. Protasiewicz is not accused of either. When Robin Vos, the powerful Republican speaker of the state assembly, asked three former conservative state supreme court justices for their advice on the issue, at least two told him they didn’t think it was warranted.

When their opinions became public, Vos said the state legislature would no longer consider Protasiewicz’s remarks out of office in a possible impeachment inquiry but maintained that impeachment was “on the table” depending on how the case went.

The impeachment threats underscore the anti-democratic power the GOP wields – and how desperate they are to hang on to it. Republicans hold a near-supermajority in Wisconsin’s state legislature – 22 of 33 seats in the state senate and 64 of 99 seats in the state assembly – even though Wisconsin is one of the country’s most competitive swing states.

More than a decade ago, shortly after winning unified control of the state, they drew districts to lock in their majorities. The lines have worked ruthlessly; in every two-year election over the last decade, they have consistently held nearly two-thirds of the seats in the state assembly, including in 2018 when Republicans lost the statewide vote. When Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump in the state in 2020 and Evers won re-election in 2022, Republicans were unscathed in the legislature, holding on to more than 60 seats.

In a dramatic power grab, Republicans in the state legislature used their majorities to curb the power of the newly elected Democratic governor and attorney general in 2018. And when Tony Evers, Wisconsin’s Democratic governor, called special sessions to address issues such as abortion, childcare and education, Republicans responded by showing up at the legislature then immediately ending their sessions rather than holding debate.

In April 2020, as Covid-19 swept the country, other states under both Democratic and Republican leadership moved their primaries rather than force voters to gather in crowded public spaces to cast their ballots. But Wisconsin Republicans refused to move the state’s primary, starting and abruptly ending a special legislative session called by Evers. They fought measures to expand remote voting during the pandemic. And after Trump lost the 2020 election in Wisconsin by just over 20,000 votes, Republicans launched a review of the election that leaned heavily into false conspiracy theories but failed to unearth any evidence of widespread fraud.

This year, they have moved to fire the non-partisan head of the state elections commission, one of the most widely respected election administrators in the country, even though Republicans unanimously voted to confirm her appointment just a few years ago. They have also refused to seat a Democratic appointee to the panel.

For over a decade, the gerrymandered maps have set up an unsettling reality: election results for state legislative races are largely determined before a single Wisconsin voter casts a vote. Now that there are enough liberal votes on the court to strike down the legislature’s maps, Republican lawmakers are leaning on the undemocratic power they have accrued to try and keep their strong majorities.

“It’s the last gasps of a gerrymandered legislature,” said Eric Genrich, a Democrat who serves as the mayor of Green Bay, one of several areas in the state Republicans have split into multiple districts to dilute the influence of their Democratic voters.

“You have a number of folks that are doing anything and everything to hold on to the power that they’ve accumulated over the last more than decade,” Genrich continued. “You just see more and more extreme ideas and policies being put forward in order to ensure that there isn’t fundamental democratic accountability built into our system.”

Cracking’ and ‘packing

Republicans have held their advantage in the legislature by manipulating legislative lines across the state. In cities such as Madison, Green Bay and parts of Milwaukee, they have packed Democratic voters into a few districts, limiting their influence. They have attached Democratic voters in the suburbs elsewhere to deep-red rural districts.

Election observers call that practice “cracking”, and its inverse – squeezing voters of one party into a few districts – “packing”. Essentially, Republicans have configured the map to maximize their seats while limiting competition.

In 2020, Joe Biden defeated Trump in the state by more than 20,000 votes, but he won just 35 of the 99 districts. In 2022, Evers won re-election as governor with a three-point margin of victory, but carried just 38 of 99 assembly districts. Republicans’ lines are so effective that they won about 13 more seats in the state assembly in 2022 than they would if the map distributed the votes of both parties equally, according to an analysis by Planscore, a non-partisan site that evaluates maps.

Republicans dispute that the maps are to blame for Democratic disadvantages in the legislature. Most of the state’s Democratic voters are concentrated in just two areas, Madison and Milwaukee, while Republicans are spread across the entire state. In 2022, Evers got about 36% of his statewide vote from the two counties that house those cities.

“This idea that the maps are rigged and we have Democrat voters being unconstitutionally disenfranchised I think is a stretch,” said Brett Healy, the president of the MacIver Institute, a conservative thinktank.

Healy is skeptical that new maps would fundamentally change Republicans’ behavior.

“I don’t think much would change legislatively. It would be tough for Republicans, it would be tough for Democrats to compromise on their core beliefs,” he said. “When you have a slim majority, more often than not, your team comes together and votes as one.”

Mayer, the University of Wisconsin political scientist, disagrees.

“The state is gerrymandered within an inch of its life,” he said. “There’s no doubt that basically the Republican supermajorities in a 50-50 state are almost entirely the result of gerrymandering.”

Heavily Democratic Milwaukee and its Republican-friendly suburbs have been one of the key places where Republicans have manipulated lines to keep their advantage. In 2012, they attached Democratic areas on the outskirts of the city to Republican suburbs. But when those suburbs shifted towards Democrats during the Trump era, those districts became more competitive – so they redrew the lines in 2021 to remove Democratic voters to make the seats more safely Republican.

When Republicans drew new legislative maps in 2011, for example, they anchored the 24th assembly district in the northern suburbs of Milwaukee. Voters there reliably elected a Republican, Dan Knodl, to represent them in the assembly. But after 2020, when Joe Biden carried the district with 51% of the vote, a Republican victory seemed in jeopardy. Knodl had only won his 2020 re-election by percentage points, a drop of four points from his margin in 2018.

In 2021 Republicans redrew the map to protect Knodl, removing Democrats from the district and packing them into already Democratic-leaning districts nearby. And they extended the 24th district north, snaking along the coast of Lake Michigan, into areas that were more reliably Republican. Knodl won re-election in his new district in 2022 by more than 22 percentage points.

Bob Tatterson, a Democrat, lost to Knodl in 2022. He believes that the district would have been competitive if not for Republican redistricting.

“It was immediately obvious that what had happened was there were two competitive districts that had been essentially turned into two very uncompetitive districts,” he said.

Having districts that are significantly rigged in one party’s favor makes it more difficult to even recruit candidates to run, said Christy Welch, the chair of the Green Bay-area Brown County Democratic party.

“If you’re the state party, if you’re an individual donor, it makes sense that you want to spend your money in winnable races. And then that creates a vicious cycle of ‘it’s harder to get someone to run’. And then it’s hard to get someone to contribute to the campaign,” she said.

Glimmer of hope

Republicans’ severe gerrymander has affected concrete policy issues in Wisconsin.

Polling conducted by Marquette University shows about 60% of Wisconsinites believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases (the new liberal majority on the state supreme court is also expected to strike down the state’s 1849 abortion ban). In a 2019 Marquette poll, 55% of respondents supported raising the minimum wage, nearly 60% said marijuana should be made legal and more than 70% of respondents said Wisconsin should adopt a non-partisan redistricting commission to draw its legislative maps rather than leaving that power with the statehouse.

None of these policies have been enacted.

The Democratic state senator Mark Spreitzer, who introduced a non-partisan redistricting bill in 2015 when he served in the state assembly that Republicans ignored, predicted more competitive legislative maps would force lawmakers to compromise on issues they are currently refusing to consider.

Republicans in the state legislature have rejected Evers’ calls for a special session to extend a pandemic-era childcare subsidy program using state funds, prompting Evers to redirect federal funds to keep the program in place – a temporary fix to a problem Spreitzer suggested could be resolved through bipartisan negotiation.

“There is bipartisan agreement that there’s a childcare crisis,” said Spreitzer. “That’s an area where if we had a legislature that was elected on fair maps, I think we could find a bipartisan solution.”

Spreitzer also pointed to the legalization of marijuana and Medicaid expansion as possible areas of bipartisan interest. Wisconsin is one of only nine states where lawmakers have refused to expand Medicaid.

“There are a lot of Republicans who are taking their marching orders from Robin Vos,” he said. “If they suddenly had to think for themselves, [they] would realize that it just makes sense to go ahead and get this done.”

Chris Ford, an emergency care physician in Milwaukee and chairman of the People’s Maps Commission, a non-partisan advisory redistricting board created by Evers in 2020, said expanding access to Medicaid was one of his main concerns. Citing the link between political representation and health outcomes, Ford said he initially got involved with fair maps activism to help his patients.

Medicaid expansion “can loosen up funds to relieve some of the lead exposure in Milwaukee county and rural counties as well. It could go to the expansion of rural mental healthcare. For me, as an emergency health provider, I could see it giving access to much needed primary healthcare for people before they end up in the ER,” Ford said.

Under the current maps, those issues have gone nowhere.

But with the new liberal majority on the state supreme court, some, like Democrat Mary Lynne Donohue, say there are finally signs of change.

Donohue, the president of the Sheboygan Area school district, ran for a seat in the assembly in 2020 even though she knew she had no chance to win. The Democratic-leaning city was once represented by a single Democratic-leaning district, but Republicans cracked it in two a decade ago to keep Democrats from electing one of their own to the assembly.

Donohue said the lack of electoral competition had demoralized residents, made it hard to recruit candidates for office, and stifled overall civic participation: “It’s hard to get a lot of energy going and to fully participate in the political process, because you know you can’t win.”

With the possibility of new maps looming, she thinks “people just have this glimmer of hope”.


https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/oct/27/republicans-gerrymandering-redistricting-wisconsin-supreme-court?ref=upstract.com
0 Replies
 
Real Music
 
  2  
Reply Fri 22 Dec, 2023 09:23 pm
BREAKING: Democrats score one of the biggest wins of 2023

Published Dec 22, 2023

0 Replies
 
Real Music
 
  2  
Reply Sun 24 Dec, 2023 06:16 pm
Wisconsin State Rep. Greta Neubauer: 'People want their democracy to be real'

Richard Lui is joined by Wisconsin State Rep. Greta Neubauer to discuss her state’s Supreme Court ruling Friday that the current Republican-drawn legislative maps are unconstitutional and must be redone.


Published Dec 24, 2023

0 Replies
 
 

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