Wisconsin is at the forefront of a national debate over how states are attempting to re-draw legislative maps, as Republicans and Democrats vie for political dominance in their states and in Congress.

Redistricting — the process of redrawing the boundaries of electoral districts to ensure that each district has roughly equal population size — is intended to be a fair and neutral process. However, gerrymandering — the political practice in which boundaries are manipulated to favor one political party or group over others — can get in the way.

Stark political divisions across the country have prompted a wave of litigation in recent years, including in Wisconsin where pending lawsuits are challenging the make-up of voting districts that have provided super-majorities for Republicans, Michael Li, senior counsel of the Brennan Center for Justice’s Democracy Program, told the National Press Foundation’s Statehouse Reporting fellows.

Li helped lead a wide-ranging examination of the contentious process, along with Jeff Mandell, co-founder of Wisconsin’s Law Forward, and Wendy Underhill, elections and redistricting director at the National Conference of State Legislatures.

In Wisconsin, Republic lawmakers have threatened newly elected Supreme Court Justice Janet Protasiewicz, whose victory ushered in a liberal majority on the court, if she did not recuse herself from redistricting cases. During the campaign, then-candidate Protasiewicz referred to the legislative maps as “rigged.”

“The maps we have here in Wisconsin are truly an extreme partisan gerrymander,” said Mandell, whose group is challenging the state maps.

Key quotes from Mandell, Board President and Co-Founder of Law Forward:

“Our belief is that that extreme partisan gerrymander violates our state constitution in three ways. First, it retaliates against voters, specifically because of their viewpoints, and that violates every individual’s right to free speech under the Wisconsin Constitution and every individual’s right to petition an assembly under the Constitution. It treats some voters worse than others simply by virtue of where they live. That’s a violation of the equal protection guarantee in Wisconsin’s Constitution. And third, the Wisconsin Constitution, and not all state constitutions have this, has this specific clause that guarantees that we will maintain a free government.”

“Every day that the partisan gerrymander remains is in affront to every voter in the state of Wisconsin. And this needs to be done in time for us to have fair maps for the 2024 election.”

Key quotes from Li, Senior Counsel of the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice:

“This decade I think we’re seeing more litigation than in the past … you’re also seeing more Voting Rights Act litigation in the South.”

“One of the reasons that everything seems so intense right now is that the House is really closely divided. We’ve had two elections that produced almost mirror image results, one in favor of Democrats, one in favor of Republicans, and that really is very much an anomaly.”

“I think two states that bear watching where there aren’t efforts right now are Florida, where you could see a strengthening of reforms that voters adopted by adopting an independent commission. … [And] Illinois, where Democrats did do a gerrymander, people have long tried to put a ballot initiative on the ballot in Illinois. The Illinois Supreme Court keeps rejecting it, but we will see whether that’s a state to watch.”

Keys quote from Underhill, Elections and Redistricting Director of the National Conference of State Legislatures:

“Race matters a whole lot. We have both the [Voting Rights Act], which says we must take into account race because we must give minority populations the capacity to elect the candidate of their choice. … And then, who’s drawing the maps, that matters a whole lot … legislatures are in charge in … two thirds of the states, so it’s important to remember that even though we hear a lot about reform, it is still primarily a legislative function.”

Access the transcript here.

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