GOP Voting Maps Passed By Senate Committee

By Ruth Conniff, Wisconsin Examiner

November 4, 2021

The Wisconsin Senate Committee on Government Operations advanced the Legislature’s proposed voting maps Thursday, voting 3-2 along party lines to pass the bills out of committee. The bills, SB-621 and SB-622, which draw new legislative districts and Congressional districts, respectively, were the subject of a heated day-long public hearing last week. All of the testimony at that hearing, with the exception of the presentation of the maps by Republican legislative leaders, was in opposition to the Republican proposal, which largely maintains the districts drawn in the 2011 voting maps. Experts and members of the public denounced those maps as gerrymandered to give Republicans an unfair advantage.

During Thursday’s executive session of the Senate’s government operations committee, Sen. Duey Stroebel (R-Saukville), the chair of the committee, praised the proposed maps for largely maintaining existing boundaries. Stroebel said the maps met core redistricting principles because they avoided moving voters by splitting up existing voting districts.

Sen. Kelda Roys (D-Madison) objected to what she described as the Republicans’ sudden embrace of the idea of hewing as much as possible to the old maps, after dramatically redrawing those maps in the last round of redistricting following the 2010 census.

“The idea that somehow you should be rewarded for moving as few people as possible now, when 10 years ago, you know, [Republican legislators] moved people all around … so that they could gerrymander the maps — I don’t take a lot of comfort from that. And I don’t think that the Republican leaders deserve a lot of credit,” Roys said.

“You’ve made maps 10 years ago, throwing any traditional redistricting principle out the window and going for as partisan and secure a gerrymander as you possibly could,” Roys added. “Well, now you’re treating those maps like they’re historical relics, worthy of treating with a lot of sacredness like they’re the Constitution or something, when in fact, they’re just a 10-year-old gerrymander.”

Stroebel replied that the principles he enumerated for keeping the existing maps were also laid out by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers in his January 2020 executive order creating the nonpartisan People’s Maps Commission. “I don’t think it can be ignored,” he said. “And I think that the principles that Gov. Evers even spoke of really address a lot of the concepts that you’re speaking to.”

Evers’ executive order creating the People’s Maps Commission labeled the Republicans’ 2011 voting maps “some of the most gerrymandered, extreme maps in the United States,” stating that, under those maps, “approximately 50 times more voters were moved to new districts than was necessary.” In calling for the creation of the nonpartisan commission to prepare maps, Evers laid out the goals that the new maps would “be free from partisan bias and partisan advantage; avoid diluting or diminishing minority votes … be compact and contiguous; avoid splitting wards and municipalities; retain the core population in each district; maintain traditional communities of interest; and prevent voter disenfranchisement.”

“If you want it to follow these new principles that the Republican Party suddenly believes they stand on,” Sen. Jeff Smith (D-Brunswick) told the committee, the Legislature should use the previous, 2001 map as a starting point.

“We need to throw this entire map out and start fresh and allow all parties involved to have a voice and take the politics out of it,” Smith added.

Stroebel then called the roll and the new maps passed out of committee on a straight party-line vote.

The morning headlines delivered to your inbox. Subscribe.

The Wisconsin Examiner,a nonpartisan, nonprofit news site, offers a fresh perspective on state politics and policy through investigative reporting and daily coverage dedicated to the public interest. The Examiner is part of States Newsroom, a national 501(c)(3) nonprofit supported by grants and a coalition of donors and readers.