House Speaker Paul Ryan is retiring after never facing a close election in Wisconsin’s 1st District, but there’s one critical reason why he’s never come close to losing before: gerrymandering. Following the 2010 census, Wisconsin Republicans gerrymandered the state’s congressional map to lock in five seats for themselves and just three for Democrats, even though Barack Obama had carried the state by a 56-42 margin two years earlier.
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But what if instead Wisconsin’s map had been drawn without partisan preferences taken into account, on either side? At the top of this post you can see what one such nonpartisan map might look like. Under a plan like this, Wisconsin would instead be home to an equal number of Republican and Democratic seats, plus two districts competitive for both parties—one of which would have been Ryan’s. The actual 1st District voted for Mitt Romney by a 52-47 margin in 2012, but this nonpartisan version flipped the script and went 52-47 for Obama. Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin also carried this seat that same year, meaning there’s a good chance Ryan would have lost under district lines like this.
But of course, Ryan did get to enjoy a map drawn for his benefit, rendering his continued career in Congress the product of GOP gerrymandering run amok, with Wisconsin as ground zero. In fact, Badger State Republicans drew the lines so aggressively that they maintained majorities among their congressional delegation and in the legislature in 2012 even though Democratic candidates won more votes—and the GOP has had little trouble holding onto power ever since.
Indeed, Republican gerrymandering in Wisconsin is so egregious that redistricting reformers chose to make an example of it, with a lawsuit challenging the map for the state Assembly that has now made it all the way to the Supreme Court. Indeed, the justices may soon strike down this map in a landmark case that could finally impose limits on partisan gerrymandering for the first time. But regardless of what they do, we need to stop these gross violations of the democratic process—the kind that entrenches Paul Ryans safely in office instead of allowing voters to express their will.
