Republican Sen. Ron Johnson won reelection in 2022 in Wisconsin by just over 25,000 votes — the latest slim-majority victory in the state, which gave its 10 Electoral College votes to former President Donald Trump in 2016 with a victory of 22,000 votes and then flipped to President Joe Biden in 2020, who won the state by around 20,000 votes.
But despite the state’s history of winning elections on the margins, Republicans dominate the state legislature, with 64 Republicans and 35 Democrats in the Wisconsin Assembly. The groundbreaking ruling in late December by the Wisconsin Supreme Court throwing out the GOP-drawn district lines could threaten that control — and change the state’s political landscape.
Though Republicans told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that the U.S. Supreme Court will have the “last word” on the matter, now hinting at taking the fight to defend Wisconsin’s electoral maps, which have consistently favored the GOP, to the higher court.
They rejected the map for having districts which are not contiguous, which violates the state constitution. That would be a pretty straightforward issue, if it weren’t for the fact that the state constitution also requires districts to follow local civic boundaries, and unfortunately, those boundaries produce areas that are not contiguous.
Theoretically, that means the US Supreme Court should not have a say in this since the decision is one based purely on the state constitution, not any federal issues. It would take a considerable leap of logic for the US Supreme Court to justify intervening in the case.
But what’s really frustrating is that this map should be rejected for partisan gerrymandering. It’s obvious, it’s what we all actually care about, and the republicans have admitted they drew the map specifically to get the biggest possible advantage, which they justify by pointing out that “it’s not illegal.” Of course, by not illegal, they mean the US Supreme Court has refused to rule that gerrymandering is unconstitutional because it was deemed to be a political question. So, even though it is effectively no different than passing a law that makes votes for one party get counted twice, courts can only intervene to protect the basic functioning of democracy when there is a technicality like this, or if it’s specifically along race lines, since that would violate the voting rights act.
Mostly correct. However, race is not only protected by the VRA. Equal Protection applies to multiple protected classes. Theoretically, for example, a gender-based gerrymander would also be illegal - it’s just also practically impossible to do. So would religion-based.