By David Gordon, associate editor
Wisconsin’s current redistricting battle will almost certainly be decided by the courts, but the question is which court?
This process will be an expensive solution for the state and its taxpayers. The final bill will be much higher than if – somehow – the opposing political parties in what has once again become partisan warfare could come to an out-of-court agreement, according to a local activist on the gerrymandering issue.
Wendy Sue Johnson, an Eau Claire lawyer and one of the people who sued the state in 2017 over its 2011 redistricting boundaries, spoke online last week to some 30 people attending a program sponsored by the Chippewa Valley chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Her comments came a day before the state Assembly passed the Republican voting map bill and sent it to Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, who has pledged to veto it.
That would throw the issue of the coming decade’s voting district lines into the court system, where both Republicans and Democrats have active lawsuits that each were filed before the Legislature took even the first step toward dealing with drawing new electoral maps.
The GOP suit is pending before the state Supreme Court, which agreed on a 4-3 vote to accept it without first requiring lower courts to hear the case. The Dems’ suit is in federal court.
Johnson noted that the federal court has indicated it will give the state some time to resolve the situation but won’t wait indefinitely for the apparent deadlock between the Legislature and the governor to be settled.
Problem is illustrated
To illustrate the problem with the current map, she noted that Republicans won 60 of the 99 seats in the Assembly in 2010 and retained 60 seats in 2012 despite a gain of 430,000 votes statewide by the Democrats. This was made possible, she said, by the gerrymandered 2011 electoral map passed by the GOP-controlled Legislature and signed by Republican Gov. Scott Walker.
Johnson said 56 of Wisconsin’s 72 counties have asked for reform of the state’s reapportionment process. Republican administrations control some three-quarters of those making the request, she noted.
She also mentioned a Marquette Law School poll that showed nearly two-thirds of those responding in favor of a “fair maps” approach.
Johnson said the only way an impasse like the current one could be avoided would be the passage of federal legislation that required fair reapportionment maps. For now, she said, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that reapportionment issues must be resolved by the individual states.
Some effects of gerrymandering
One way to gerrymander voting districts is to pack opposition party voters into a single district while creating several nearby districts where the ruling party usually can muster smaller majorities. This has happened in the Eau Claire area but one result is that Republican voters in heavily-Democratic Eau Claire have little chance that their votes will matter in state legislative elections, Johnson said.
She referred to a New Yorker article by Elizabeth Kolbert that said gerrymandering has become so precise that election contests in many districts now occur only in primary elections. There are few chances for moderate candidates to prevail in these circumstances because candidates “play to the lunatic fringe,” she added.
One result, Johnson said, is little opportunity for compromise once these candidates are elected. Another is a “chilling” of people’s interest in voting, she added.
Johnson said the lawsuit challenging the 2011 reapportionment, in which she was one of the plaintiffs, advanced the reapportionment debate even though the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against the challenge. She quoted several favorable comments from lower court judges, where the challenge was upheld, as examples.
Note: a Zoom recording of the program is available at https:/–/bit.ly/aclucvc2021prog and is also posted on the Chippewa Valley ACLU website and Facebook page.