Gov. Tony Evers’ signature on the new legislative maps was hardly a surprise. The maps the Legislature passed were his own proposal, after all. Failing to sign in hopes of bigger gains under maps drawn by the state supreme court would have been massively hypocritical.
Not that such a thing generally prevents politicians from acting in a partisan manner, but we digress.
Assembly Speaker Robin Vos said after the Legislature passed the maps that it “will be up for grabs” in the coming elections. That strikes us as a bit of hyperbole. Frankly, we’d be very surprised if either chamber flipped to Democratic control, or came particularly close to it. Republicans will likely continue to hold majorities, though they will probably be trimmed a bit.
This was a step in the right direction for Wisconsin, but the reality is that we’re still very much in the same fundamental predicament as we have been since last year’s supreme court elections. It takes little imagination to envision Republicans putting forward a new redistricting case if conservatives regain control of the court.
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Rather than having a stable set of maps based on the decennial census, Wisconsin now has a system in which the maps could change repeatedly depending on the results of a single person’s election. That’s no way to run a state.
We’ve said it before, but it’s worth reiterating that there is a far better option being demonstrated by one of our neighbors. Iowa’s maps are stable, extremely competitive, and are leagues away from being the political football they are here. It’s a model Wisconsin should use as a basis for a new approach.
In Iowa a bipartisan panel draws the maps. The House and Senate leaders from each party get to pick one panelist apiece. Those four members then appoint a fifth. The approach ensures that the panel has representatives from both conservative and liberal factions, with a compromise selected as a tiebreaker.
The result? The maps drawn are rarely the subject of debate. They’re as compact as possible, with as nearly equal numbers of residents as can be done. The districts generally seek to avoid dividing cities or counties. There’s little fuss or bickering because there are genuinely few reasons to object.
Iowa has turned increasingly red over the past couple decades, and it’s clearly a Republican state at this time. That wasn’t the result of gerrymandering. It happened because Republican candidates consistently won competitive elections in districts that weren’t tilted to either party.
That should be the goal for legislative districts. As we have said several times, gerrymandering pushes all parties toward their extremes. When the biggest risk to a re-election campaign is being outflanked by a primary challenger, rather than the general election, the temptation to present an ever more extreme version of your basic views is very difficult tor resist. It encodes a fundamental incentive to abandon any hint of centrist views, indulging instead in a drive for ideological purity.
That, in turn, makes compromise at the capitol very difficult indeed.
We believe that good governance demands compromise. It requires that people elected to office be able to negotiate. States are ill-served when officials fail to rely on such fundamental approaches.
The instability of the current arrangement is not a good thing for Wisconsin. It is not good for our elections, our government or our people. There’s a good model to serve as the basis for reform, and it’s time that the Legislature took a long, hard look at it.