Hundreds of people came to the Capitol on Thursday, Oct. 28 2021 to testify against the new voting maps drawn by Republican legislative leaders which advocates characterized as 'gerrymandering 2.0' | Wisconsin Examiner photo

The drama in Texas, where President Donald Trump has demanded that Republicans quickly draw new GOP districts to thwart the will of the voters and ensure his party retains control of Congress in the upcoming midterm elections, has created massive discord. 

Progressives and voting rights advocates are divided on whether California and New York should fight the Texas power grab by gerrymandering their own states, creating more safe Democratic seats, even if that means undermining fair maps and the authority of those states’ nonpartisan redistricting commissions.

In Wisconsin, which just got out from under one of the worst partisan gerrymanders in the U.S., and the impenetrable, outsized Republican majorities in the state Legislature it protected for a decade and a half, this issue hits particularly close to home.

It’s head-spinning to hear arguments for Democratic counter-gerrymandering in other states from the same people in Wisconsin who were recently crying out for fair maps. 

If Democrats are going to mount a serious challenge to the fascist takeover of our country by Trump and his minions, it’s hard to see how ceding the moral high ground and running roughshod over the principle that the will of the majority of voters should prevail is going to help. 

I get that it’s more satisfying to imagine a quick fix to the fascist takeover of every branch of government than to listen to a lot of vague talk about long-term plans to rebuild democracy. After all, election deniers and the architects of the Jan. 6 attack are now running the federal government, demanding access to voter lists across the country and deploying the FBI to arrest political opponents, including the Texas Democrats who’ve fled their state to stall the gerrymandering scheme there. 

But here in Wisconsin, where we’ve just finally beaten back the most gerrymandered map in the country, it’s depressing to imagine Democrats abandoning the high ground and scrambling to do exactly what Republicans did when they controlled all three branches of government, attempting to lock in permanent political control against the will of the people.

If we want democracy, fairness, and the rule of law, we need to champion, well, democracy, fairness and the rule of law. 

In this most extreme political moment, with every public institution and the continued existence of U.S. democracy in doubt, I understand why the long view frustrates people. The emergency is now. I understand that many voters want to see Democrats “fight fire with fire,” as Newsom put it.

But consider this: Republicans control more state legislatures (28 Republican versus 18 controlled by Democrats) and have trifecta control of all branches of government in more states (23 all-GOP states versus 15 all-Democratic). JD Vance just launched a tour of Republican states to encourage more mid-decade gerrymandering. And Trump wants to hold a new census for the purpose of redefining who can vote. Even if Democratic Govs. Gavin Newsom and Kathy Hochul succeed in gerrymandering California and New York, Democrats are not likely to win the nationwide redistricting war.

Meanwhile, democracy will be the first casualty of that war. California and New York would have to suspend the work of their nonpartisan redistricting commissions — the gold standard for fair, nonpartisan map-drawing — and take back partisan control of the process in order to carry out their threats. If they succeed, it is beyond unlikely that the politicians who pull off that short-term victory will ever cede back their power over the voting maps to the nonpartisan commissions again.

On a deeper level, the Democratic gerrymandering fantasy takes the whole movement to oppose Trump in exactly the wrong direction. Instead of building grassroots support to counter an unpopular, authoritarian leader, it rigs the system to benefit a party whose whole problem is that it has lost the broad, popular support it needs to win elections and create a better, more enlightened government. 

Instead of trying to rig the maps to ensure a Democratic House majority in the next election, Democrats need to focus on winning elections and flipping seats in areas of the rural and industrial Midwest that were once reliably blue but have turned deep red.

To do that they need to make the case that health care, education and an adequate social safety net are bedrock rights in the richest nation on earth, and that we should not be giving tax breaks to billionaires by taking food out of the mouths of hungry children. 

They need to offer something to the farmers and factory workers and disaffected voters in rural and urban areas alike that is clearly different and better than the hate, corruption, and a determination to run roughshod over democracy that Republicans offer.

In Wisconsin, voting rights groups have been working on a campaign to push through a constitutional amendment modeled on one in our neighboring state of Michigan, to make sure that our voting maps are never again drawn up by partisan legislators.

That’s the kind of grassroots fight that helped Wisconsin finally overcome Republican gerrymandering. One important aspect of the fair maps movement is the way it engaged citizens to feel like participants, not spectators, in democracy, and to find their common interests instead of focusing on the politics of division. This, not more politicians in safe seats who don’t have to listen to voters, is what we need right now. 

The battle to beat back fascism does not turn on a handful of Democrats in protected districts. It turns on an organized uprising by the majority of people in the U.S. who are willing to join together despite their differences because they are sick and tired of having their democracy stolen from them, along with their health, safety, opportunity and hope. There’s no short cut to leading that fight. 

A Wisconsin Fair Maps Coalition yard sign posted in 2020. The coalition has begun a new round of work advocating for an independent, nonpartisan system of drawing Wisconsin's legislative maps. (Photo by Tony Webster/Wisconsin Fair Maps Coalition)

With court-ordered maps that have made more Wisconsin legislative races competitive for both political parties, pro-democracy advocates are turning back to a longstanding objective: a permanent change in how the maps are drawn.

Instead of state lawmakers who are currently in charge, political reform groups are organizing to move the task to a new, independent commission that would draw Assembly and Senate districts every 10 years, following the new U.S. census, in ways that reflect Wisconsin’s close political divide.

“Our goal is to have a more accountable legislative body,” says Iuscely Flores, organizing director for the Wisconsin Fair Maps Coalition.

A change will require an amendment to the Wisconsin Constitution, which currently assigns the task of drawing legislative districts to the Wisconsin Legislature.

Until 2011, the state’s redistricting process generally went well for nearly half a century, according to Jay Heck, executive director of Common Cause Wisconsin. The Legislature was closely divided between Republicans and Democrats. Regardless of the governor’s party, the other party usually had a slim majority in either the Senate or the Assembly.

“It was split control,” says Heck. “Redistricting was usually incumbent protection, but it wasn’t particularly partisan.”

The 2010 election in Wisconsin changed that, with Republicans for the first time in a half-century getting control of the governor’s mansion and both houses of the Legislature.

In 2011 the lawmakers drew what became widely recognized as one of the most gerrymandered legislative maps in the country. “They picked the most partisan maps they could,” says Heck.

The 2012 election showed the impact: Wisconsin voters reelected Democratic President Barack Obama to a second term and sent another Democrat, Tammy Baldwin, to the U.S. Senate. And 51% of the votes for the Wisconsin Assembly were for Democratic candidates. Yet Republicans won 60 of the 99 seats in the lower house.

In the years that followed, Common Cause, the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign and the League of Women Voters all took up the cause of putting redistricting in the hands of an independent body, arguing that a group of citizens drawn from across the political spectrum could more accurately reflect the state’s true political makeup.

While the idea gained public support, it got the cold shoulder from the Legislature’s majority.

Then came the maps drawn after the 2020 census, approved in 2022 following a legal battle that was settled by the conservative majority in the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Those maps further solidified a lopsided balance between the parties in the Legislature.

In 2023, voters flipped the Court’s balance from conservative and aligned with the Republican party (although the justices are officially nonpartisan) to a majority elected with the support of the Democratic Party. For reform advocates, the switch presented a new opportunity, and the focus turned to a lawsuit challenging how the 2022 maps were drawn.

The outcome of that lawsuit in 2024 produced maps that more closely reflected the narrow partisan divide in the states. In the 2024 elections, Democrats picked up four state Senate seats, erasing a GOP supermajority, and added 14 seats in the Assembly.

While those maps were closer to fair, however, a larger problem remains, reform groups argue: the Wisconsin Constitution gives the lawmakers the ultimate power to draw their districts in ways that preserve their political advantage.

The process for amending the state constitution requires lawmakers to vote on a proposal in two successive legislative sessions, then for voters to endorse the amendment in a statewide referendum. That means a little more than four years must pass before the change could be instituted.

Flores says the coalition is keeping an eye on that timeline, with plans to engage lawmakers from both parties next year in order to get legislation introduced and passed.

“We have to fix this permanently — that is what we are now focused on,” says Penny Bernard Schaber, leader for the Fair Maps Coalition’s team in the 8th Congressional District. “We want to put both parties on notice that we need to fix what we are doing.”

Even as the maps lawsuit was underway, advocates for bigger change were continuing to meet and organize, Flores says. And after the Court ruling and the adoption of the new, fairer maps, the work for an independent redistricting body kicked into higher gear.

An ad hoc committee on redistricting reform met monthly and later more often over the last year, with participants drilling down into alternatives for structuring independent redistricting bodies.

“We were able to really study how independent redistricting commissions in other states really worked,” Flores says.

“We looked at every single state that has an independent commission,” says Debra Cronmiller, executive director of the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin. There were conversations with academics and other groups that draw legislative maps.

“We tried to glean from all of that information what would work best for Wisconsin,” Cronmiller said.

The Wisconsin Fair Maps Coalition has drawn up a draft for how a Wisconsin commission might work, but Flores emphasizes that it’s still a work in progress.

The coalition has begun a series of community hearings to engage the public, explain the concept and refine the details. Hearings were held in the Milwaukee North Shore suburbs in June and in Dodgeville on July 12.

On Wednesday evening, there will be a hearing in Green Bay at the Brown County Central Library starting at 5:30 p.m. On Thursday one is scheduled for Wausau, and more meetings are planned through the summer and into the fall.

“We’re trying to get community input,” Flores says. “There are questions we still don’t know the answers to, and we’re learning so much  — it’s been an amazing, citizen-led process that I don’t think I’ve seen before.”

The groups and individuals working on the project are considering “how to make sure that the commission accurately reflects and represents the people of Wisconsin — how to make sure that we incorporate people from different political backgrounds, different ethnicities,” Flores adds. “We’re trying to be what Wisconsin looks like.”

Wisconsin Supreme Court chambers. (Baylor Spears | Wisconsin Examiner)

The Wisconsin Supreme Court issued two orders Wednesday, declining to hear cases challenging the constitutionality of the state’s congressional maps. 

Democrats had hoped that the liberal wing of the court retaining majority control of the body in this spring’s election would give them an opportunity to change the congressional lines. Republicans currently hold six of the state’s eight congressional seats, and Democrats hoped they could flip the 1st and 3rd CDs under friendlier maps. 

Before Republicans drew new congressional lines in 2010, Democrats controlled five of the state’s seats. The current maps were drawn by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers and approved by the state Supreme Court when it was controlled by conservatives. That Court had required that any proposed maps adhere to a “least change” standard that changed as little as possible from the 2010 maps. 

While Evers’ maps made the two competitive districts slightly closer contests, they’re still controlled by Republican U.S. Reps. Bryan Steil and Derrick Van Orden. 

The two lawsuits were brought by the Elias Law Group representing Democratic candidates and voters and the Campaign Legal Center on behalf of a group of voters. The cases argued the maps violated the state’s constitutional requirement that all voters be treated equally. 

The challenges against the maps drew national attention as Democrats hope to retake control of the U.S. House of Representatives in next year’s midterm elections. 

This is the second time in as many years that the Supreme Court, under a liberal majority, has declined to hear challenges to the congressional maps. 

In both cases, the Court issued unanimous decisions without any explanation as to why they weren’t accepting the cases. 

Aside from declining to hear the cases, Justice Janet Protasiewicz issued an order denying requests that she recuse herself from the case. Republicans have called for her recusal from redistricting cases because of comments she made during her 2023 campaign about Wisconsin’s need for fairer maps. Previously, after Protasiewicz joined the Court, as part of a new liberal majority, it declared the state’s legislative maps, which locked in disproportionate Republican majorities in the Legislature, unconstitutional. 

“I am confident that I can, in fact and appearance, act in an impartial manner in this case,” she wrote. “And the Due Process Clause does not require my recusal because neither my campaign statements nor contributions to my campaign create a ‘serious risk of actual bias.’”