#wisconsin legislature

[tomorrowusa]

Wisconsin is ditching the GOP hyper-gerrymandered maps for its state legislature. Democratic Gov. Tony Evers signed a new set of maps into law which are vastly fairer.

Late last year the newly liberal Wisconsin Supreme Court threw out the gerrymandered maps. The court flipped after Judge Janet Protasiewicz defeated a MAGA opponent last April.

Under the previous maps, Republicans held about two-thirds of both the state Assembly and Senate. Under the new boundaries, the state Assembly and state Senate will likely see more balance between the two parties. Republicans currently hold 64 out of 99 state Assembly seats under the Republican-drawn maps. Under the new state Assembly map, the districts are more evenly split. The new map has 46 districts that lean Republican and 45 districts that lean Democratic. The eight districts left are likely to be a toss-up between Democratic and Republican candidates. Under the previous maps, Republicans hold 22 out of 33 state Senate seats. Under the new state Senate map, 14 out of 33 districts are Democratic-leaning, while 15 are Republican-leaning. Four districts are competitive, where either party has a fair chance of winning them.

You can't take back America without taking back the states. And you can't govern the states if you neglect elections for state legislature and state supreme court (in states where the court is elected).

Celebrate this victory for democracy by looking up who represents you in your own legislature. If you are represented by MAGA Republicans, contact your county or state Democratic Party and ask what you can do to help flip your district.

Find Your Legislators Look your legislators up by address or use your current location.

[wausaupilot]

Yee Leng Xiong announces run for Wis. 85th Assembly seat

Damakant Jayshi | Wausau Pilot & Review A Marathon County supervisor could be the first Hmong state representative if he is elected to represent the 85th Assembly district. Yee Leng Xiong, a longtime leader in Marathon County’s Hmong community and the Dist. 19 supervisor for the Marathon County Board, will seek the seat this fall, according to a campaign news release. Xiong will run as a…

[vicforberger]

Legislature pushes a bunch of no-reform unemployment proposals

With the April 2023 election, an incredibly general, state-wide advisory ballot question about people on welfare needing to work passed by wide margins. The Wisconsin legislature has taken that passage as a message to suddenly revamp and fine tune unemployment eligibility without actually fixing any of the problems with unemployment claim-filing in this state. First some background. It is…

[kp777]

By Jake Johnson

Common Dreams

Aug. 14, 2023

"Republicans are threatening to use their gerrymandered supermajority to remove the newly elected Wisconsin Supreme Court justice who could strike down their gerrymanders."

The Republican leader of Wisconsin's Assembly late last week threatened impeachment proceedings against liberal state Supreme Court Justice Janet Protasiewicz if she doesn't recuse herself from cases involving Wisconsin's legislative maps, which GOP lawmakers have aggressively gerrymandered to give themselves what experts say is an illegal electoral advantage.

In a radio interview on Friday, Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos accused Protasiewicz of "prejudging" the outcome of a potential case challenging the legality of Wisconsin's maps.

Earlier this month, a coalition of voting rights groups and law firms filed a lawsuit over the maps, appealing directly to the Wisconsin Supreme Court to strike them down.

Protasiewicz, whose election victory earlier this year ended conservatives' 15-year dominance of the Wisconsin Supreme Court, was critical of the state's maps during her campaign, calling them "rigged" and arguing they "do not reflect people in this state."

"I don't think you could sell any reasonable person that the maps are fair," Protasiewicz said in January. "I can't tell you what I would do on a particular case, but I can tell you my values, and the maps are wrong."

During his Friday interview, Vos characterized Protasiewicz's comments as sufficient grounds for recusal, claiming that they show she can't be an "impartial observer" on cases related to the state's maps.

But critics see Vos' suggestion of impeachment proceedings as an anti-democratic threat by a supermajority worried about losing its grip on power.

Republicans have controlled the Wisconsin Legislature for 12 consecutive years, and they have the two-thirds majority necessary to convict in the Senate. Just a majority vote in the Assembly is needed to impeach.

As the Associated Pressreported Sunday, the Wisconsin Constitution "requires legislative districts 'to consist of contiguous territory,'" but "many nonetheless contain sections of land that are not actually connected."

"The resulting map looks a bit like Swiss cheese, where some districts are dotted with small neighborhood holes assigned to different representatives," the outlet added. "Wisconsin's Assembly districts rank among the most tilted nationally, with Republicans routinely winning far more seats than would be expected based on their average share of the vote."

Stephen Wolf of Daily Kos Electionswrote in response to Vos' comments that "Republicans are threatening to use their gerrymandered supermajority to remove the newly elected Wisconsin Supreme Court justice who could strike down their gerrymanders."

"Gerrymandering let the GOP win exactly two-thirds in the state Senate in 2022 despite Dems winning most statewide races," Wolf noted.

Even if the Republican-controlled Wisconsin Senate doesn't ultimately succeed in convicting Protasiewicz, her impeachment in the Assembly would, under Wisconsin law, prevent her from hearing cases until her acquittal, observed Michael Li, redistricting and voting counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice.

"If the Senate drags its feet in holding a trial, that might be enough to leave gerrymandered maps in place for 2024," Li warned.

The Campaign Legal Center (CLC), Law Forward, the Election Law Clinic at Harvard Law School, Stafford Rosenbaum LLP, and Arnold & Porter argued in a petition filed with the Wisconsin Supreme Court earlier this month that the state's legislative maps are "extreme partisan gerrymanders that violate multiple provisions of the Wisconsin Constitution."

The lawsuit demands a redrawing of legislative maps and special elections for state Senate seats that wouldn't otherwise be up for reelection until 2026.

"The legislators elected in November 2022 took office in unconstitutionally configured districts," the lawsuit states. "That constitutional infirmity has persisted for over a decade now, and Wisconsinites have suffered under this unconstitutional system for long enough. Legislators have no right to complete a term of office that was unconstitutionally obtained."

[calicojack1718]

The Psychological Explanation of the Wisconsin Legislature's Reversal on Gerrymandering

The Wisconsin GOP is now supporting democracy? Will give up gerrymandering a permanent super-majority? How is that EVEN possible? Psychology has the answer, even if it is likely a trap!

SUMMARY: The blog post discusses the recent shift in the Wisconsin Republican Party’s stance on gerrymandering and their endorsement of a non-partisan commission to draw legislative districts. It explores the reasons behind this change, highlighting the risk aversion principle in behavioral economics. The post analyzes the electoral history in Wisconsin, showing the growing support for Democratic…

[reasonsforhope]

"Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers (D) has vetoed a Republican-led ban on transgender high school athletes, saying that such legislation would needlessly harm the mental well-being of trans youth and make the state less safe for LGBTQ+ people. State Republicans reportedly lack the votes to override his veto.

“This type of legislation, and the harmful rhetoric we get by pursuing it, harms LGBTQ Wisconsinites’ and kids’ mental health, emboldens anti-LGBTQ harassment, bullying, and violence, and threatens the safety and dignity of LGBTQ Wisconsinites, especially our LGBTQ kids,” Evers wrote in his veto message.

“I am vetoing this bill in its entirety because I object to codifying discrimination into state statute and the Wisconsin state legislature’s ongoing efforts to perpetuate hateful and discriminatory rhetoric and policies targeting LGBTQ Wisconsinites including our transgender and gender nonconforming kids…. I will veto any bill that makes Wisconsin a less safe, less inclusive, and less welcoming place for LGBTQ people and kids,” Evers added.

He vetoed the bill in a public ceremony while surrounded by trans advocates, Democratic lawmakers, the mayor of Madison and others, NBC News reported.

The bill would have required public, private, and independent charter schools to designate each team by the gender of its participants, and then require participants to play on teams matching the gender listed on their birth certificates.

The bill would have overruled current policies, established in 2015 by the Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association, that allowed trans students to play on sports teams matching their gender identity as long as they provided a personal letter; supporting documentation from parents, teachers, and medical professionals; and proof of any gender-affirming care...

Last September [in 2023], Evers vetoed a Republican-led bill that would’ve banned gender-affirming medical care for minors."

-via LGBTQ Nation, April 2, 2024

[contemplatingoutlander]

"The gerrymandering alone undermines Wisconsin’s status as a democracy. If a majority of the people cannot, under any realistic circumstances, elect a legislative majority of their choosing, then it’s hard to say whether they actually govern themselves."

--Jamelle Bouie, Opinion Columnist, The New York Times

Jamelle Bouie points out the disturbing way that Republicans in Wisconsin have basically destroyed democratic representative government on all levels by:

Creating an unbreakable gerrymander to ensure a Republican legislative majority, even if more people vote for Democrats.

Weakening the power of a Democratic governor,.

Targeting a liberal Wisconsin supreme court justice for removal or suspension so that the state SC won't have the power to rule against gerrymandered districting maps, and won't be able to prevent a 19th century ban on abortion from becoming law.

This is chilling. Below are some excerpts from the column:

For more than a decade, dating back to the Republican triumph in the 2010 midterm elections, Wisconsin Republicans have held their State Legislature in an iron lock, forged by a gerrymander so stark that nothing short of a supermajority of the voting public could break it. [...] In 2018, this gerrymander proved strong enough to allow Wisconsin Republicans to win a supermajority of seats in the Assembly despite losing the vote for every statewide office and the statewide legislative vote by 8 percentage points, 54 to 46. No matter how much Wisconsin voters might want to elect a Democratic Legislature, the Republican gerrymander won’t allow them to. [...] Using their gerrymandered majority, Wisconsin Republicans have done everything in their power to undermine, subvert or even nullify the public’s attempt to chart a course away from the Republican Party. In 2018, for example, Wisconsin voters put Tony Evers, a Democrat, in the governor’s mansion, sweeping the incumbent, Scott Walker, out of office. immediately, Wisconsin Republicans introduced legislation to weaken the state’s executive branch, curbing the authority that Walker had exercised as governor. Earlier this year, Wisconsin voters took another step toward ending a decade of Republican minority rule in the Legislature by electing Janet Protasiewicz, a liberal Milwaukee county judge, to the State Supreme Court, in one of the most high-profile and expensive judicial elections in American history. [...] “Republicans in Wisconsin are coalescing around the prospect of impeaching a newly seated liberal justice on the state’s Supreme Court,” my newsroom colleague Reid J. Epstein reports. “The push, just five weeks after Justice Janet Protasiewicz joined the court and before she has heard a single case, serves as a last-ditch effort to stop the new 4-to-3 liberal majority from throwing out Republican-drawn state legislative maps and legalizing abortion in Wisconsin.” Republicans have more than enough votes in the Wisconsin State Assembly to impeach Justice Protasiewicz and just enough votes in the State Senate — a two-thirds majority — to remove her. But removal would allow Governor Evers to appoint another liberal jurist, which is why Republicans don’t plan to convict and remove Protasiewicz. If, instead, the Republican-led State Senate chooses not to act on impeachment, Justice Protasiewicz is suspended but not removed. The court would then revert to a 3-3 deadlock, very likely preserving the Republican gerrymander and keeping a 19th-century abortion law, which bans the procedure, on the books. If successful, Wisconsin Republicans will have created, in effect, an unbreakable hold on state government. With their gerrymander in place, they have an almost permanent grip on the State Legislature, with supermajorities in both chambers. With these majorities, they can limit the reach and power of any Democrat elected to statewide office and remove — or neutralize — any justice who might rule against the gerrymander. [color/emphasis added[

"It’s that breathtaking contempt for the people of Wisconsin — who have voted, since 2018, for a more liberal State Legislature and a more liberal State Supreme Court and a more liberal governor, with the full powers of his office available to him — that makes the Wisconsin Republican Party the most openly authoritarian in the country."

--Jamelle Bouie, Opinion Columnist, The New York Times

[edited]

[lizardsfromspace]

Saw someone actually lay out how messed up the situation is in Wisconsin to relatively little notice on another site & I didn't know that situation was like. That unknown. But

Wisconsin is no longer democratic & is a test case for right-wing rule's endgame

Not democratic in a political party sense. Not democratic in a "it is no longer a democracy in most senses" sense

It went for Biden in 2020 (& blue every recent Presidential election bar 2016) and Democrats won every state office in 2018...

...but it's impossible for them to have a majority in the legislature. Even the 50/50 split implied by election results is impossible

After a Democrat won in 2018 they stripped the Governor of all his power. All he can do is veto bills & call special sessions...

...which end in seconds bc the right just immediately gavels them closed. Sessions on gun violence & abortion ended instantly, with no debate, and thus nothing but far-right laws can even go up for a vote

Not only do they not confirm his appointees but they won a court case saying anyone appointed by a past Governor can stay in after their term if no one new is confirmed

Since the right won't confirm anyone new, people appointed by Scott Walker effectively have their offices permanently, four years later

People going "just vote!" feels so weird bc, yeah, in this case voting is vital, we need a Democratic governor to veto bills, but also you can literally "just vote" & nothing else. Changing the system or even the smallest positive advance is impossible. The best result is upholding the status quo & delaying the right's full takeover of the few offices they don't control by another four years, something you can't count on being able to do bc they've spent the past two years testing the waters of letting the legislature just overrule election results completely

Anyway this is the future, today! and we live in hell

[tomorrowusa]

Republicans, at least the ones who matter, are at war with democracy. Under Trump, they have taken off the masks.

Defeating Republicans by voting Democratic or for Democratic-leaning candidates is the only way to preserve democracy in the US. Last week the decisive defeat of a Trumpist Big Lie election denier was made possible, in part, by a high turnout of younger voters in Wisconsin.

[S]cores of down vest-wearing, smartphone-gazing students at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire in a line that snaked around every corner of a campus building as they waited to cast a ballot for an open seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

When the votes were tallied at the end of the night, some 883 people had cast ballots at the campus polling place — more than any other precinct in Eau Claire, and nearly six times as many as voted there in a similar election four years earlier. And 87% of the students had voted for Democrat Janet Protasiewicz — perhaps a rejection of her Republican opponent Dan Kelly’s lifelong opposition to abortion and his work trying to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory.

The surge in young-voter turnout was a key reason why Protasiewicz won a landslide, 11-point victory in a key swing state that Biden had only won by just over 20,000 votes three years earlier. 

The lesson is simple: if you don’t want authoritarian fundamentalist fanatics running your city/county/school district/state/country then vote in every election in high numbers to defeat them.

Of course the challenge is greater in places where the GOP has gerrymandered itself into a supermajority.

[T]ake a look around to Nashville, Tenn., where white GOP lawmakers stunned the nation by expelling two Black colleagues and disenfranchising their roughly 140,000 predominantly African American constituents because the men had, from the floor of the Capitol, joined a thousand or so young people protesting gun violence. (A white female Democrat who also protested kept her seat by one vote.)

The Tennessee expulsions, tinged with a racism that echoed from 1960s civil rights protests with deep roots in Nashville’s once-segregated lunch counters, showed America just how far Republicans are willing to go to hold power — by nullifying the votes of Black and brown voters and drowning out the voices of young people who thoroughly reject Republican dogma around AR-15 assault rifles, transgender athletes, or banning abortion.

Previous lack of sufficient interest by moderate to progressive voters had permitted democracy-hating Republicans to become entrenched in many places. Removing such people from power is going to be prolonged electoral trench warfare.

What’s more, this political counterrevolution in legislative corridors is taking place right as the conservative movement’s grand project of the last half-century — a ruthless, multimillion-dollar crusade to install unaccountable, lifetime right-wing judges across the federal bench — is coming to full fruition. Good Friday’s decision by Amarillo, Texas-based federal Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, a Donald Trump appointee rooted in ultraconservative networks, seeking to undo approval of the abortion drug mifepristone after 23 years on the market is a huge end run around democracy in a nation where a majority of voters support abortion rights. Conservatives routinely file lawsuits in Amarillo because Kacsmaryk is that district’s lone judge.

The next time somebody you know voices support for some ineffectual third-party presidential candidate, remind them of Donald Trump’s lifetime appointment of anti-abortion fanatic Federal Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk in Texas.

Continuing with the metaphor of anti-democracy warfare...

Republicans are responding with an asymmetrical civil war against democracy, constantly looking for the weak points to deploy their IEDs of autocracy, determined to blow up the American Experiment if that’s what it takes to retain power by any means necessary. Their tactics are working well, unfortunately. Darth Vader’s Death Star had just one opening to exploit, but U.S. democracy has many — gerrymandering, the filibuster, the Electoral College, the undemocratic makeup of the U.S. Senate, statehouse power plays against home rule for Black or brown or progressive-minded communities, a take-no-prisoners hijacking of the judiciary. The only shock of Thursday’s next-level expulsion of two duly elected Black lawmakers in Nashville was the proof that — as Republican ideas become more unpopular — there is no bottom to how low this movement will go.

And the targeting of these two young Black activists — Reps. Justin Jones of Nashville and Justin Pearson of Memphis — should have removed any lingering doubts around what the GOP’s war on democracy is ultimately all about: white power. 

The anti-democracy Republicans are well armed, that’s why we have to fight smart. They got Roe v. Wade overturned because they were persistent and patient. We need to steal patience and persistence from them.

And yet there is also reason for great hope. America’s young people — the ones who left their classrooms last week and overran the state capitol in Nashville to plead for real action against gun violence, the ones fighting book bans in their schools and speaking out for radical action on climate — are the bravest and boldest generation this nation has seen in some time. Their moral authority, and their rising power at the ballot box from Eau Claire to Memphis, is why a decrepit GOP is lashing out. History will surely remember what happened in Tennessee as an affront to democracy — and the last throes of a dying movement.

The GOP is very much like Putin and his clique of sycophants. They like to talk tough, but when seriously challenged in conflict they show themselves to be weaker than the image they like to project.

[wausaupilot]

Republican leaders urge Gov. Evers to sign divisive PFAS legislation

by Baylor Spears, Wisconsin Examiner April 2, 2024 Top Republican lawmakers urged Democratic Gov. Tony Evers on Monday not to veto a bill that would provide a way for $125 million to be used to combat PFAS across Wisconsin. Evers has said he would veto the bill because of provisions that would restrict the state Department of Natural Resources’ enforcement powers against polluters and…

[foreverlogical]

Democratic Gov. Tony Evers signed new legislative districts into law on Monday to replace gerrymandered Republican maps that the new liberal majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court struck down in December. If the court signs off on the new maps, Wisconsin would finally get much fairer districts after more than a decade of tilted maps that have locked Democrats out of power in this longtime swing state.

Evers had recently proposed these maps to the court in the hopes that the justices would select them, but in a surprise, the Republican-run legislature passed them last week before the court could act. The court is still likely to review these new maps to ensure they comply with the criteria it laid down for any remedial plans, including that they be politically neutral.

As illustrated in the graphic at the top of this story, Joe Biden would have won an 18-15 majority of seats in the state Senate, while Donald Trump would have carried a 50-49 majority of state Assembly districts. (Click here and here for interactive versions with partisan and demographic data from Dave's Redistricting App.) The now-invalid Republican maps, by contrast, gave Trump an 22-11 edge in the Senate and a 64-35 advantage in the Assembly.

Because only half of the seats in the Senate will be up for election in November, Democrats would likely have to wait until the 2026 elections before they could flip the upper chamber. However, the new maps would give them a chance to take back the Assembly this fall.

Republicans may have opted for Evers' proposals because they are slightly more favorable to the GOP compared to other plans that were under consideration by the court. Nonetheless, Evers' maps are still much fairer than the current GOP gerrymanders, which let Republicans win a veto-proof two-thirds supermajority in the Senate in 2022 and nearly hit that mark in the Assembly despite Democrats winning most statewide races that same year.

[kp777]

Excerpt:

The 4-3 ruling, issued Friday, deemed the current GOP-drawn lines unconstitutional and cites a violation of the state constitution's requirement of "contiguous territories" in districts. Set to be enforced in March 2024, the revised map will put all 132 state lawmakers up for reelection in a pivotal year, providing Democrats with an opportunity to challenge the Republican stronghold on the state's legislature.

[renthony]

From the article:

Less than two months into 2024, lawmakers in at least 13 states have introduced legislation that could disrupt libraries’ services and censor their materials. The new wave of bills follows a historic year of book challenges, mainly affecting titles centered on the topics of race, gender identity or sexual orientation. “The American Library Association condemns in the strongest terms possible legislation in more than a dozen states that would threaten librarians and other educators with criminal prosecution for doing their jobs,” said Deborah Caldwell-Stone, the director of the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, in a statement. “This is not a culture war; it’s a threat to our democracy.” Caldwell-Stone added, “Nowhere have we witnessed attacks on education like those currently proposed in Wisconsin.” The Wisconsin Legislature is considering a bill to take away protections from library employees being prosecuted on charges of possessing “obscene” materials by removing public, private and tribal schools from the list of institutions exempt from prosecution for obscene materials violations. “Those who would prosecute librarians and teachers would divert precious education resources to defending frivolous lawsuits and policing our nation’s most trusted institutions and community anchors: libraries and schools,” Caldwell-Stone said. In Idaho, a bill proposes to prohibit librarians from making materials that include sexual conduct available to minors. Homosexuality is included in that category alongside sexual intercourse and masturbation.

[calicojack1718]

All of the Expelling, Impeaching, Refusing to Assign Committees are Symptoms of the Sportification of Our Politics

Ever wonder how MAGA can tolerate, accept, excuse the fascist anti-democratic behavior of Republican office holders? It's okay if you're Republican.

During the past decade or so, the United Fucking States of Fucking Stupid has been finding new ways of being stupider mostly courtesy of MAGA and the Republican politicians that are now complete!y beholden to them. Just when you think it can’t get any stupider, you hear some widget mutter, Hold my beer, and we’re sinking lower into the cesspool. Republicans have locker us into a demented child’s…

[reasonsforhope]

"In a 4-3 decision released on Friday afternoon December 22, the Wisconsin Supreme Court held that Wisconsin’s voting maps as currently drawn violate the state constitution and must be redrawn in time for the 2024 election.

Under the Wisconsin Constitution, state legislative districts must consist of “contiguous territory.” [Meaning: continuous] Yet, the majority opinion states, “the number of state legislative districts containing territory completely disconnected from the rest of the district is striking.”

“At least fifty of ninety-nine assembly districts and at least twenty of thirty-three senate districts include separate, detached territory,” states the majority opinion, written by Justice Jill Karofsky.

Contiguous districts are a safeguard against gerrymandering and help keep together groups of voters who live in the same areas and have the same interests, explains the decision, which includes maps highlighting the islands of noncontiguous voting areas in the state’s current districts.

The voters who brought the lawsuit, Clarke v. Wisconsin Elections Commission, argued that the current districts violate the constitution and asked the court to  order the adoption of remedial maps. They also asked the court to declare the November 2022 state senate elections unlawful, and to order special elections for state senate seats that would otherwise not be on the ballot until November 2026.

The court’s ruling agrees with the petitioners that “Wisconsin’s state legislative districts must be composed of physically adjoining territory,” and enjoins the Wisconsin Elections Commission from using the current legislative maps in future elections. But it declined to invalidate the results of the 2022 state senate elections.

Acknowledging that it is the legislature’s role to draw voting maps, the majority opinion urges the legislature to draw new maps that comport with the constitution. However, it also states, since the legislature might not draw such maps or the governor might veto them, the court will plan to adopt remedial maps that can be used in time for the 2024 elections and unless and until new, constitutional maps are enacted through the legislative process...

Wisconsin’s voting maps are widely considered among the most politically gerrymandered in the country. This was reflected in 2018 when Democrats swept every statewide election and earned 53 percent of assembly votes cast statewide but only 36 percent of Assembly seats went to Democrats. Voters in Wisconsin are evenly split along partisan lines, and statewide races are often decided by slim margins. Currently, however, Republicans hold a 22-11 supermajority in the state senate and a 64-35 near-supermajority in the state assembly."

-via The Progressive Magazine

Note: Article is a bit wordy but this is a Big Deal. We're going to get fair election maps in an important swing state. The maps thrown out by this decision were deliberately designed to give Republicans a massive advantage in the election.

This WILL make a huge difference in who's elected in 2024.