Wisconsin politics were shaken up this year with the signing of new legislative maps that ended over a decade of extreme and effective Republican gerrymandering.

It was the first time in Wisconsin history a Legislature and a governor of different parties agreed on legislative redistricting, the Legislative Reference Bureau told Wisconsin Watch.

In a good Republican year across the country, Wisconsin Democrats flipped 14 seats in the Legislature — largely because of those new maps. It wasn’t enough to win a majority in the Assembly or the Senate, but the resulting 54-45 and 18-15 splits better reflect Wisconsin’s swing-state status.

Wisconsin’s congressional maps were not redrawn. Republicans kept six of the state’s eight congressional seats in the U.S. House of Representatives.

The state’s current congressional maps were drawn by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers and approved by the then-conservative Wisconsin Supreme Court in 2022. The last time a governor of one party and a Legislature of another agreed on congressional maps was in 1991.

Evers’ maps were slightly more favorable to Democrats than the previous decade’s maps, but they didn’t change that much because the court established a “least change” rule when deciding which maps it would approve. That meant they would largely conform to the Republican maps that had been in place since 2011.

In March, the now-liberal high court denied a request to reconsider the state’s congressional maps before this year’s elections without stating a reason. Evers had asked for changes to the congressional maps soon after he signed the new legislative maps into law in February. Those maps were approved by the GOP-controlled Legislature.

Elias Law Group filed a motion in January asking the court to revise the congressional boundaries ahead of the 2024 election. The Democratic law firm argued that new maps were justified after the court abandoned the “least change” approach when deciding on the legislative map challenge last year. In that case, the state Supreme Court said it would no longer favor maps that present minimal changes to existing boundaries.

Democrats argued that Evers’ congressional boundaries drawn in 2022 were decided under the “least change” restrictions later thrown out by the court in the legislative redistricting case.

Republicans pushed back, arguing that newly elected liberal Justice Janet Protasiewicz prejudged the case during her 2023 campaign. They requested she recuse herself from the case. But Protasiewicz said she decided not to vote on the motion to reconsider the congressional maps because she wasn’t on the court when the underlying case was decided.

Republican Party of Wisconsin chair Brian Schimming in a statement called the court’s decision “the demise of Governor Evers’ latest attempt to throw out his own hand-drawn congressional maps.”

Republicans have retained control of six of Wisconsin’s eight House seats, with Democratic Reps. Mark Pocan and Gwen Moore safely controlling the two districts that cover Madison and Milwaukee. In comparison, Democrats held five of the eight seats in 2010 — the year before Republicans redrew the maps.

The 1st and 3rd districts are currently the only competitive congressional districts in Wisconsin, represented by Republican Reps. Bryan Steil and Derrick Van Orden respectively. Steil won his race this month with 54% of the vote, and Van Orden won with 51.4% of the vote.

Conservative Chief Justice Annette Ziegler and Justice Rebecca Bradley in their concurrence wrote the new majority’s “reckless abandonment of settled legal precedent” in the legislative redistricting case “incentivizes litigants to bring politically divisive cases to this court regardless of their legal merit.”

Representatives of Elias Law Group did not respond to Wisconsin Watch when asked if they anticipate another legal challenge to the congressional maps ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.

“I remain very interested between now and 2030 in trying to find a way to get the court to … tell us whether partisan gerrymandering violates the Wisconsin Constitution. I believe it does,” Jeff Mandell, founder of the liberal legal group Law Forward, told Wisconsin Watch. “I believe the court will say it does when we present the right case.”

But Mandell said nothing has been drafted, and his group won’t bring a case to the Supreme Court unless it has “got the goods.”

Wisconsin Watch readers have submitted questions to our statehouse team, and we’ll answer them in our series, Ask Wisconsin Watch. Have a question about state government? Ask it here.

Why were state legislative districts redrawn for 2024, but congressional districts remain unchanged? is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin and Gov. Tony Evers address a group of about three dozen members of the Jefferson County Democratic Party on Election Day. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)

In Fort Atkinson, more than three dozen members of the Jefferson County Democratic Party — as well as a few joining from the neighboring Dodge and Walworth counties — packed into the small county party office to welcome U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin and Gov. Tony Evers before kicking off some last minute canvassing.

Full of excitement at the prospect of electing Democrats Melissa Ratcliff and Joan Fitzgerald to its seats in the state Senate and Assembly (both in attendance at the event) after years of Republican representation under the old legislative maps, the Democrats from a rural county nearly mid-way between the urban centers of Madison and Milwaukee said they were expecting wins on Tuesday.

“I think our country has weathered the storm, and grown in the process,” Fort Atkinson Democrat Jim Marousis says.

Baldwin is running for re-election in one of the country’s most closely watched Senate elections, with Democrats needing her to win in order to retain control of the chamber.

“We are the battleground state,” Baldwin told the gathered group of supporters. “We will decide, most likely, who the next president is, what party controls the United States Senate, what party controls the House of Representatives. All could be decided right here in our state.”

At the beginning of Baldwin’s remarks, the crowd sang happy birthday to Evers, who is celebrating his 73rd birthday on Tuesday. Evers touted the work Baldwin has done in Wisconsin to secure supplies for the state during the COVID-19 pandemic and convince the federal Small Business Administration to provide loans to northern Wisconsin businesses last winter when a lack of snowfall shut down many winter recreational activities.

Evers said that the ground game of Wisconsin Democrats is going to make the difference for the party up and down the ticket on Tuesday, adding that he was hopeful the party would win control of the state Assembly.

“People all across the Wisconsin Democratic Party are doing the things that make the difference,” he said. “Wisconsin has the best ground game. Nothing compares to here.”

With about five hours until polls close on her second re-election campaign, Baldwin said she was optimistic at her chances.

“As of the time that early voting started two weeks ago, and certainly my travels today give me great hope and optimism,” she told the Wisconsin Examiner. “I feel like we have the momentum. I feel like people are stepping up to volunteer. Some have never volunteered before, and it’s not necessarily easy to go knock on a stranger’s door. And also the news of new registrations leading up to Election Day is heartwarming. I’m hearing early readouts now from the clerks in various communities about really motivated voters. So anyways, I’m feeling great.” 

Mikayla Hughes singing during an early voting gathering at the Midtown Center in Milwaukee. (Photo | Isiah Holmes)

“The cure for the ills of democracy is more democracy,” is a famous maxim from the early 20th century that has been variously attributed to the prominent American social worker and women’s suffrage leader Jane Addams, to the leading American philosopher and psychologist of that era, John Dewey and, most famously, to the iconic former Wisconsin Governor and U.S. Senator Robert M. “Fighting Bob” LaFollette. Regardless of who actually coined that phrase, it was utilized by all three and has proven to be predictive and prescriptive time and again over the years. Now, it may never be more applicable and essential for the survival of our 235-year-old American Experiment in representative self-government than it is today, in 2024.

This year so far in Wisconsin has been an astonishingly positive period for the advancement of democratic engagement and participation after more than a decade of continuous diminishment and destruction of what was once considered the nation’s foremost laboratory of democracy.

Fair maps

In February, after 13 years of enduring one of the most partisan, unfair and unrepresentative political gerrymanders in the nation of our state’s legislative districts, Wisconsinites rejoiced as Gov. Tony Evers signed into law new, much fairer and more competitive state legislative voting maps. The new maps are in effect for 2024 and likely will remain in place until the end of this decade. These maps favor neither Democrats or Republicans. Instead, they much more accurately reflect the very closely divided, 50/50, “blue/red” partisan divide that is Wisconsin, arguably the most “purple” state in the nation.

The return of ballot drop boxes

In July the Wisconsin Supreme Court overturned a misguided and injurious decision made two years ago by the previous court majority that wrongly prohibited the use of secure ballot drop boxes for all Wisconsinites. Disabled and elderly voters and people who live in areas where voting hours are limited used drop boxes to safely and securely return absentee ballots to election clerks in time for them to be counted on Election Day. Eliminating drop boxes was a callous voter suppression measure that was put in place only in Wisconsin and in about a dozen deep red southern and western states. Fortunately, the current Wisconsin Supreme Court majority corrected this travesty of justice and in many (but not all) communities, ballot drop boxes have been restored for the Nov. 5  election and beyond.

Voters reject constitutional amendments

Finally, in August during the partisan primary elections in Wisconsin, voters rose up and decisively defeated two constitutional ballot measures that would have hamstrung the ability of the governor of Wisconsin to distribute federal funds allocated to Wisconsin in times of emergency, such as a natural disaster or pandemic, without the permission of a small group of powerful partisan legislators. When voters were educated about the effect of this last gasp of a gerrymandered partisan legislative majority to seize more power and further upset the critical balance of political power in this state, voters resoundingly voted “No!” Voter turnout in August was higher in this state in a partisan primary election than any other in the past 60 years.

These three momentous and heartening victories for all of the voters of Wisconsin and for democracy signify that if citizens get engaged and informed they will support the expansion of voting rights, people empowerment and the preservation and enhancement of democratic norms and traditions and will defeat attempts to curtail these liberties. The recent developments in Wisconsin also demonstrate that a fully engaged citizenry and very robust voter turnout are as critical to the survival of democracy as oxygen is to the act of breathing and to life itself.

The cure for the ills of democracy in Wisconsin and nationally is voting. When we vote we help to cure the sickness of citizen disengagement that afflicts us as well as the despair, pessimism and cynicism that accompanies that sickness. When we vote we become a healthier and more empowered citizenry. The upcoming election on Nov. 5 is the most important and consequential of any for most of us in our lifetimes. There is no excuse for not actively participating in this election by, at the very least, voting. And each of us can and should do even more to promote voting by expressing its urgency with family members, friends, neighbors, and even strangers if we are able. Vote as if our country and democracy depend on it because in a very real and tangible way, it does.