No Democrat is an island

Except when they need an excuse
to do their own gerrymandering!

Just in time for Christmas, Janet (spell it with me) Protasiewicz has delivered on the 10 millions of Democrat(ic) party dollars invested in her election last year to fulfill a campaign pledge. Democrats awoke this December morning to find under their secular Holiday Tree — not visions of sugar plums dancing in their heads but of unseating Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos. 

“Justices order new maps,” reads the headline. 

Surely, new legislative districts will produce Democrat majorities, at long last. Especially if they are drawn by the new Democrat-endorsed state supreme court. (And they call Republicans election deniers!)

To be properly drawn, courts have consistently required legislative districts to be equally populated, respect municipal boundaries, be compact, and contiguous as possible.

The Protasiewicz court went where no one was looking. It upended existing maps on the basis of contiguousness. The existing map “looks a bit like Swiss cheese, where some districts are dotted with small neighborhood holes assigned to different representatives,” reporters Alexander Shur and Mitchell Schmidt report in a generally thorough account.

There’s a good reason for that

The unfortunate implication is that these neighborhood holes were punched out by Republican gerrymanderers. As evidence, the WI State Journal maps Senate District 27 on Madison’s west side.

As a bonus to our Platinum Subscribers, Blaska Policy Werkes presents that same map in living color. Assembly District #80 is shown in green. Notice the green islands floating in purple Assembly District #79? Gerrymandering? No, those islands are all Town of Middleton stranded inside the city of Madison. The green islands surrounded by Assembly District #78 in white? Town of Middleton on the north and Town of Verona to the south. Now overlay that map with the City of Madison map. Same islands.

In other words, the existing map fulfilled a requirement of good districting: they respected municipal boundaries. The residents of those “islands” vote in their town halls and pay property taxes to their town government. Its voters may even have resisted incorporating into the city. If anyone lives in them at all! Most islands are undeveloped farmland.

If the court eliminates those islands, it will have violated the municipal boundary requirement. What abundant court precedent does NOT allow is the consideration of partisanship. For the simple reason that it is evanescent. But that restriction is out the door in this court. Said one of Protasiewicz’s allies among the 4-member majority:

“As a politically neutral and independent institution, we will take care to avoid selecting remedial maps designed to advantage one political party over another. Importantly, however, it is not possible to remain neutral and independent by failing to consider partisan impact entirely.”

— Justice Jill Karofsky

Blaska’s Bottom Line: Um, yeah it is possible, Justice Jill! Republicans did not create those islands; cities like Madison did when they annexed real estate surrounding them. One more thing: Districts 78, 79, and 80 are all represented by Democrats.

For whom does YOUR Christmas bell toll?