The state of Wisconsin does not choose its state legislature in free and fair elections, and it has not done so for a very long time. A new lawsuit, filed just one day after Democrats effectively gained a majority on the state Supreme Court, seeks to change that.
The suit, known as Clarke v. Wisconsin Elections Commission, seeks to reverse gerrymanders that have all-but-guaranteed Republican control of the state legislature — no matter which party Wisconsin voters supported in the last election.
In 2010, the Republican Party had its best performance in any recent federal election, gaining 63 seats in the US House of Representatives and making similar gains in many states. This election occurred right before a redistricting cycle, moreover — the Constitution requires every state to redraw its legislative maps every 10 years — so Republicans used their large majorities in many states to draw aggressive gerrymanders.
Indeed, Wisconsin’s Republican gerrymander is so aggressive that it is practically impossible for Democrats to gain control of the state legislature. In 2018, for example, Democratic state assembly candidates received 54 percent of the popular vote in Wisconsin, but Republicans still won 63 of the assembly’s 99 seats — just three seats short of the two-thirds supermajority Republicans would need to override a gubernatorial veto.
The judiciary, at both the state and federal levels, is complicit in this effort to lock Democrats out of power in Wisconsin. In Rucho v. Common Cause (2019), for example, the US Supreme Court held that no federal court may ever consider a lawsuit challenging a partisan gerrymander, overruling the Court’s previous decision in Davis v. Bandemer (1986).
Three years later, Wisconsin drew new maps which were still very favorable to Republicans, but that included an additional Black-majority district — raising the number of state assembly districts with a Black majority from six to seven. These new maps did not last long, however, because the US Supreme Court struck them down in Wisconsin Legislature v. Wisconsin Elections Commission (2022) due to concerns that these maps may have done too much to increase Black representation.
Finally.
I’m sure the Republicans will attempt to go crying to the SCOTUS, but they’ve already ruled that it’s up to the states to decide. Hopefully this will be the end of the bullshit that is the Wisconsin legislative map and my home state can finally decide freely who represents them.
You think this SCOTUS will be consistent in its rulings?
I think Roberts would decline to hear it. At least I hope some atom of integrity still remains in his body.
Remember, their recent statement that they don’t need any ethics oversight was unanimous.
While I agree with you, the 6-3 supermajority means a lone Robert’s vote doesn’t necessarily matter
He controls what comes before the court. He could deny the request and refer to the previous judgment.
This is not true. The court votes on which cases to hear and a case only needs 4 votes to make it.
Each justice has a physical region where they are the gatekeeper in some sense. I believe the comment above is saying this case would come up in Robert’s region and he could effectively refuse to bring it up for vote with the other justices.
That’s not quite how it works. They each are assigned a circuit but that’s not for deciding which cases are heard. All appeals go to all 9 of them and if 4 of them decide they want to hear it, then they do.
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The guy who made up the major questions doctrine from whole cloth? Lol.
Roberts is just as bought and sold as Thomas. Roberts voted 100% against labor and public interest in all supreme court cases.
So good to see WI get out from under this bullshit. If the people want ®’s, let them get them fairly. Gerrymandering (in either direction) is bollocks.
I think the whole concept of grouping voters by geographical location is a bad idea
The concept is often described as allowing politicians to pick their voters - its a recipe for something that looks like a democracy but is, in fact, where politicians are deciding which voters get represented before the first ballot gets cast.
How would you do it instead? Do you feel the same about federal elections, in which voters are grouped by state?
For things like house seats where there are a dozen or more positions, proportional representation would probably be better. Unfortunately that system is so foreign to Americans I think it would be a tough sell.
Popular vote through and through. If you don’t get majority votes, you don’t deserve the seat.
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I wasn’t talking about the electoral college at all, more about congressional elections, which are already decided by popular vote within voting districts and states. If we didn’t group voters by location (in this case state) no individual state would have representation in Congress, instead just having Representatives elected by the country as a whole through a proportional representation system. I don’t necessarily think this is a bad thing, but it would be a major change from what Americans are used to, so I was curious about people’s opinions on it.
I’m a broken record: any system built on the best case scenario is doomed to fail. Allowing politicians to draw voting districts when they have a conflict of interest is Tin Pot dictatorship tier.
its amazing how often the politicians are put in charge of things that benefit them. They can vote their own salary, affect voting district, chose judges. It seems insane!
Yep, you’re not wrong
As a Wisconsinite who voted for Janet…
LET’S FUCKIN GOOOOOOOOO!!!
This is the best summary I could come up with:
A new lawsuit, filed just one day after Democrats effectively gained a majority on the state Supreme Court, seeks to change that.
Protasiewicz’s elevation to the state’s highest court also gave Democrats a 4-3 majority (technically, Supreme Court races in Wisconsin are nonpartisan, but every recent race has pitted a liberal supported by Democrats against a conservative supported by the GOP), meaning that there’s now a very high likelihood that the state’s Republican gerrymander will fall.
The Clarke plaintiffs argue that partisan gerrymandering violates this anti-discrimination guarantee by allowing “a majority of the Legislature to create superior and inferior classes of voters based on viewpoint” — that is, by drawing maps that effectively give Republicans more voting power than Democrats.
Additionally, Wisconsin’s constitution includes a provision similar to the federal First Amendment, which provides that “every person may freely speak, write and publish his sentiments on all subjects.” The Clarke plaintiffs argue that partisan gerrymanders violate this provision because, by giving less representation to Democrats, the state effectively retaliates against those voters because of their political views.
It is possible that the court will hand down a fairly narrow decision, which might require the noncontiguous districts to be redrawn but that does not reach any of the more philosophical questions about when gerrymandering crosses the line into unconstitutional discrimination.
It is equally possible that the new majority will hand down a more sweeping decision that lays out broader rules prohibiting partisan gerrymanders in the future.
I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Good bot.
I gotta take my hat off to the GOP here. While both parties have gerrymandered, the GOP have taken it to the extreme. They will lock in their ruling majority (despite losing at the polls) in every state where they control the Supreme Court and legislature. They will become unassailable in those states.
They know they have to do this - they are (or will be) in the minority.
The Supreme Court did the USA a disservice because they could have tempered the worst excesses of the various states. But they have declared themselves hands off - let the states decide.
Sigh.
Here’s hoping WI follows the way of MI.
I don’t understand everything in this article, but this sounds like great news! Go Janet! 🤘
