• Home
  • Opinion
  • Quizzes
  • Redistricting
  • Sections
  • About Us
  • Voting
  • Events
  • Civic Ed
  • Campaign Finance
  • Directory
  • Election Dissection
  • Fact Check
  • Glossary
  • Independent Voter News
  • News
  • Analysis
  • Subscriptions
  • Log in
Leveraging Our Differences
  • news & opinion
    • Big Picture
      • Civic Ed
      • Ethics
      • Leadership
      • Leveraging big ideas
      • Media
    • Business & Democracy
      • Corporate Responsibility
      • Impact Investment
      • Innovation & Incubation
      • Small Businesses
      • Stakeholder Capitalism
    • Elections
      • Campaign Finance
      • Independent Voter News
      • Redistricting
      • Voting
    • Government
      • Balance of Power
      • Budgeting
      • Congress
      • Judicial
      • Local
      • State
      • White House
    • Justice
      • Accountability
      • Anti-corruption
      • Budget equity
    • Columns
      • Beyond Right and Left
      • Civic Soul
      • Congress at a Crossroads
      • Cross-Partisan Visions
      • Democracy Pie
      • Our Freedom
  • Pop Culture
      • American Heroes
      • Ask Joe
      • Celebrity News
      • Comedy
      • Dance, Theatre & Film
      • Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging
      • Faithful & Mindful Living
      • Music, Poetry & Arts
      • Sports
      • Technology
      • Your Take
      • American Heroes
      • Ask Joe
      • Celebrity News
      • Comedy
      • Dance, Theatre & Film
      • Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging
      • Faithful & Mindful Living
      • Music, Poetry & Arts
      • Sports
      • Technology
      • Your Take
  • events
  • About
      • Mission
      • Advisory Board
      • Staff
      • Contact Us
Sign Up
  1. Home>
  2. Redistricting>
  3. redistricting>

Wisconsin bill to end partisan gerrymandering picks up Republican support

Our Staff
July 17, 2019
Wisconsin bill to end partisan gerrymandering picks up Republican support

The state Assembly district lines in Wisconsin.

Wisconsin Legislature

A newly bipartisan group of Wisconsin legislators is pushing a bill to get politicians out of the business of drawing the state's electoral maps. It's the first such concerted move in a state capital since the Supreme Court last month gave a constitutional green light to unlimited partisan gerrymandering.

The effort still faces long odds in Madison, where Republicans have a solid hold on the Legislature thanks to their aggressive drawing of boundaries after the last census.

Their maps allowed the GOP to maintain a lopsided 63-36 majority in the state House in last year's election, and a 19-14 edge in the state Senate, even though Democrats won 53 percent of the cumulative legislative vote statewide.

A federal lawsuit — in which Democrats challenged those maps as unconstitutionally limiting their free speech and equal protection rights — was effectively killed by the Supreme Court's ruling in June that federal courts have no power to police political power plays in districting.

The decision leaves that power to voter referenda, state legislatures such as Wisconsin's or state courts like the one now considering a challenge to North Carolina's map under the state constitution.


Before that decision, a pair of senior Democrats in Wisconsin had introduced a measure that would have turned the coming round of state legislative cartography, after next year's census, over to civil servants under the oversight of a commission without any partisan majority. At a news conference Tuesday, they announced the support of three GOP assemblymen who represent competitive districts.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

"We can no longer count on anyone else to do it for us. If we want fair and competitive elections, we must all do the work," state Sen. Dave Hansen said. "We now have what we truly can call a bipartisan bill. The time is right. The time is now."

But the GOP Assembly speaker, Robin Vos, vowed to oppose any effort to hand over legislative mapmaking to "an unelected, unaccountable board of bureaucrats appointed by politicians."

The current boundaries, which Scott Walker approved as a new GOP governor eight years ago, packed Democratic voters into a relatively few state legislative districts in Milwaukee and Madison in order to minimize their influence across the suburbs and rural areas.

The congressional map was similarly drawn, and so the GOP has regularly won in five of the eight districts — including last fall, when the party got just 45 percent of the statewide vote for House candidates.

Walker is now in charge of a group coordinating the Republican efforts to maximize their congressional and state legislative power in maps drawn for the next decade.

From Your Site Articles
  • Gerrymandering back in court as N.C. case asks: Will states step in ... ›
  • High court to voters: You deal with partisan gerrymandering. - The ... ›
  • WI governor plans to shame GOP out of gerrymandering - The Fulcrum ›
Related Articles Around the Web
  • Trial in Wisconsin gerrymandering case delayed until at least July ... ›
  • The Supreme Court decided not to decide Wisconsin's ... ›
  • Wisconsin gerrymandering: Data shows stark impact of redistricting ›
redistricting

Want to write
for The Fulcrum?

If you have something to say about ways to protect or repair our American democracy, we want to hear from you.

Submit
Get some Leverage Sign up for The Fulcrum Newsletter
Follow
Contributors

Reform in 2023: Leadership worth celebrating

Layla Zaidane

Two technology balancing acts

Dave Anderson

Reform in 2023: It’s time for the civil rights community to embrace independent voters

Jeremy Gruber

Congress’ fix to presidential votes lights the way for broader election reform

Kevin Johnson

Democrats and Republicans want the status quo, but we need to move Forward

Christine Todd Whitman

Reform in 2023: Building a beacon of hope in Boston

Henry Santana
Jerren Chang
latest News

COVID created an expanded social safety net; activists are now quietly working to bring it back

Davis Giangiulio
15h

Banking, democracy & trust

Lawrence Goldstone
16h

SVB’s newfangled failure fits a century-old pattern of bank runs, with a social media twist

Rodney Ramcharan
17h

Podcast: How women are showing up for justice & democracy

Our Staff
17h

Improving voter engagement for all Americans

Barbara Smith Warner
29 March

Meet the Faces of Democracy: Carly Koppes (R-CO)

Michael Beckel
Mia Minkin
Ariana Rojas
29 March
Videos

Video: Can bipartisanship survive the rise of the independent voter?

Our Staff

Video: Ted Lasso cast at the White House press briefing

Our Staff

Video: The hidden stories in the U.S. Census

Our Staff

Video: We asked conservatives at CPAC what woke means

Our Staff

Video: DeSantis, 18 states to push back against Biden ESG agenda

Our Staff

Video: A conversation with Tiahna Pantovich

Our Staff
Podcasts

Podcast: How women are showing up for justice & democracy

Our Staff
17h

Podcast: Harnessing the power of juries

Our Staff
28 March

Podcast: Partial truths & corporate fables

Debilyn Molineaux
David Riordan
27 March

Podcast: Risky business: More bank collapses ahead?

Our Staff
27 March
Recommended
COVID created an expanded social safety net; activists are now quietly working to bring it back

COVID created an expanded social safety net; activists are now quietly working to bring it back

Government
Banking, democracy & trust

Banking, democracy & trust

Threats to democracy
SVB’s newfangled failure fits a century-old pattern of bank runs, with a social media twist

SVB’s newfangled failure fits a century-old pattern of bank runs, with a social media twist

Big Picture
Podcast: How women are showing up for justice & democracy

Podcast: How women are showing up for justice & democracy

Podcasts
Improving voter engagement for all Americans

Improving voter engagement for all Americans

Voting
Meet the Faces of Democracy: Carly Koppes (R-CO)

Meet the Faces of Democracy: Carly Koppes (R-CO)

Elections