EDITORIAL: How voters drive the move to fair redistricting

Elections have consequences.

Eons after some prescient observer first uttered those words, the battered old cliché endures and remains relevant, and for a good reason: It is perfect truth.

That was confirmed for the millionth time last week when the Republican super majority of the Wisconsin Assembly hurriedly passed a bill calling for a redistricting method it had feared, loathed and repelled as toxic contamination of state politics for years. It was a consequence of the election of Janet Protasiewicz as a Wisconsin Supreme Court justice in April.

Her victory, by one of the largest margins seen in Wisconsin elections in years, more than 11%, gave justices considered liberal a majority on the state Supreme Court. In her campaign, Protaisewicz described the state’s voting district maps as “rigged.” Two lawsuits likely to be heard by the court on which she now serves seek to invalidate the voting maps created by Republican legislators in 2021.

With the possibility of court-ordered redistricting looming, the Assembly rushed to approve a version of the nonpartisan Iowa redistricting model. Democrats and fair-voting advocates had for years proposed similar means to draw district maps, only to be stonewalled by a Republican legislative majority bent on preventing any loosening of its grip on the redistricting process.

The move is widely viewed as a ploy to avoid the finality of a court declaration that the GOP-drawn voting maps are unfair—the Assembly plan has loopholes that would allow interference by the Legislature. Still, as an admission that nonpartisan redistricting is possible and desirable, it is progress. Call it a positive election consequence.

A Supreme Court finding that would invalidate legislative maps is expected because it is patently obvious that they have been crafted to favor Republican candidates in a way that has locked in their overwhelming majority. Opinion polling and referendums in 57 of the state’s 72 counties show that a majority of voters, including even those who support Republican candidates, want nonpartisan redistricting instead of gerrymandering.

Maps of legislative districts that include parts of Ozaukee County are gerrymandered works of art. The tortured boundaries of Senate District 8, represented by Dan Knodl (R-Germantown), and Assembly District 24, represented by Paul Melotik (R-Grafton), make the districts look like jigsaw projects turned in by a student who flunked manual arts.

Added to the growing public pressure to make redistricting fair, the possible Supreme Court decision overturning current maps seems to have left the beneficiaries of gerrymandering desperate. Their concession in favor of a nonpartisan method comes as they discuss impeaching Justice Protaisewicz before she can vote on the redistricting lawsuits if she does not recuse herself.

The state constitution allows impeachment of elected officials by the Assembly only for crimes and corrupt conduct in office. The Wisconsin Judicial Commission has dismissed complaints of impropriety made against Protasiewicz.

Aside from the absence of grounds for impeachment, the removal of a Supreme Court justice before she’s heard a single case would be a radical affront to democracy that would nullify the votes of the majority of the 1.7 million citizens who voted in the April election.

The sudden appearance of a nonpartisan districting alternative may be a sign that those making impeachment noises understand that move would be an indelible stain on Wisconsin that could easily boomerang on the perpetrators.

Beneath its political expediency, the plan has some merit in that it would give the Legislative Reference Bureau authority to draw the maps. How they would be approved by a sharply divided Legislature is a sticking point that requires negotiation.

The lawsuits should proceed through the Supreme Court. If current district maps are ruled invalid, the Republican plan with its surprising concession could be a starting point for negotiations leading to what Wisconsin voters want—fair maps.

If that happens, chalk it up as more proof that, as the cliché goes, elections have consequences.