The Wisconsin gerrymandering case has made its way to the Supreme Court, oral arguments will be heard in October and a decision is expected to be in by December or January.
I attended the Fair Elections Project town hall in Wausau, Wisconsin, Wednesday, June 21st and it was quite the eye opener. I knew gerrymandering, favoring the Republican Party, was bad in Wisconsin but I didn’t know it was this bad.
The Republicans drew the maps in 2010 as they took control of the state legislature and the Governorship. Maps for the State Assembly, etc. are redrawn every 10 years, due to the census that is taken every ten years. They redrew the maps in their favor, of course, where it would be easier for them to keep the majority and keep the Democrats in the minority. This basically allowed the representatives to choose their voters, which is not the way it should be. Democrats and Republicans, alike, have redrawn maps in their favor, but in the state of Wisconsin, the Republicans are currently gerrymandering and taking it to a newly discovered extreme. No matter which political party gerrymanders, it is wrong and should be outlawed. We should allow non-partisan commissions to redraw the maps, favoring neither party.
One argument in support of gerrymandering (Amazing anybody could actually support gerrymandering) is that there is a natural gerrymander that exists. The argument goes that Democrats tend to be bunched up in larger cities, such as Madison and Milwaukee, while Republican voters tend to live in the more rural areas. This is just not true. Is it true Madison and Milwaukee have more Democratic voters and are very Liberal areas? Yes, that’s true. But do they only live in those areas? Of course not. When you look at statistics, voters of both political parties are spread out all across Wisconsin. Wisconsin is neither blue nor red, it’s purple and if you live in Wisconsin, you would agree with me.
One example of extreme gerrymandering is Eau Claire where the Republicans actually split the city in two, packing away Democratic voters in the district now represented by Dana Walchs while the Republicans won in the more rural areas.
Statewide elections in Wisconsin have been fairly close, with the results nearly being 50-50. The Democrats won the vote, statewide, in 2012 while the Republicans won the vote in 2014 and 2016. I’m not saying the percentage of Republican votes should match the amount of Republican legislatures. Say, they won 52% of the vote, should they have a 52% majority? No, that’s not what I’m saying at all. But when the Democrats win around 50% of the vote, they should not only control around 35% of the seats. The Republicans have gerrymandered our great state so bad that most Republicans don’t even care about the general elections, they worry more about the primary elections. They have it so bad that 59 (A political party needs 50 seats to hold a majority in the State Assembly) seats are safe-Republican, where Democrats don’t have a chance to win.
These maps are unconstitutional and represent a partisan gerrymander and I would hope the Justices of the Supreme Court see it the same way. This is not what democracy is about, this is not what Wisconsin is about, Fightin’ Bob would be ashamed. It’s time for voters to choose their representatives, not the other way around.