Maps and more maps - WisGOP advantages in most, even if fairly drawn. So why gerrymander?

The People’s Maps Commission have finally released their initial work products in an attempt to create “fair maps” in Wisconsin ahead of redistricting for the 2022 elections.

After taking a gander at the draft possibilities, here at the 3 I like the best (1 from each level of map-making).

Congress

State Senate

State Assembly

I will include the Assembly map below, close in on the Madison and Milwaukee metro areas, then discuss it some more.

There are certainly improvements to be made, given that some regions and cities are split up in these maps (why are there 3 Assembly districts in the city of Waupun? And I’m not keen on having Appleton split across two Congressional districts). But those are relatively simple refinements.

It's worth noting that just because it’s a fair map, it doesn’t mean that Republicans wouldn't be likely to keep control of the State Legislature. For example, in the close 2018 Governor’s Election which Dem Tony Evers won by 1%, 58 Assembly districts voted for the GOP’s Scott Walker in the map I like, and 41 voted for Evers. This is a product of natural sorting, where Dems get 80-90% of the vote in many parts of Dane County and the City of Milwaukee, with few equivalent levels of dominance for Republicans in other parts of the state.

But what does change is the competitiveness of many districts, where they can flip to Dem in a year where Dems win statewide 53-46 instead of 50-49. That doesn’t exist nearly as much today. I'll use the Evers-Walker 2018 race as an example.

People's Maps
GOP 58, win 5 by 0-5%, 8 by 5-10%
Dem 41, win 4 by 0-5%, 2 by 5-10%

Current Maps
GOP 63, win 5 by 0-5%, 13 by 5-10%
Dem 36, win 1 by 0-5%, 2 by 5-10%

You can see where those 5 close GOP wins flip over in a fair map, and 5 more GOP districts become quite close. That’s the biggest benefit to a fair map, as GOPs might be forced to listen to all of their constituents instead of a fringe few that might make the difference in primaries, because ignoring the wider masses could get you beat in November.

Even GOPs seem to be admitting that putting out a rigged map isn’t in their best interest. Robbin’ Vos and the Assembly GOPs have their own website where they are allowing Wisconsinites to submit maps through October 15, and former Vos staffer Joe Handrick (who was a key drawer of the current GOP gerrymander) came up with his own wingnut welfare org’s version of a fair map one day before the People’s Maps Commission did.

Common Sense Wisconsin notes that the 2002 map was entirely drawn and enacted into law by a non-partisan panel of federal judges. In that trial, the federal court chose to adapt neither the Republican or Democratic map. Furthermore, the court in 2002 spent a great deal of time and focus on properly drawing Milwaukee districts subject to the Voting Rights Act of the United States and then revisited and redrew those districts again in 2012.

Common Sense Wisconsin has taken this 2002 map and leveled out the population due to the changes reported in the US Census.

The result is a plan that is stunningly similar to the non-partisan plan put into place by the court in 2002 and a plan that scores exceptionally high on the objective, non-partisan criteria laid out by the Peoples Commission.

The Common Sense plan dramatically reduces the number of split municipalities and counties, improves compactness, reduces the splintering of Milwaukee County, promotes communities of interest, and adheres to the Voting Rights Act. Remarkably, it does all this while also achieving low population deviation.

Remember that the 2010 GOP gerrymander tried to dilute Milwaukee County’s influence by stretching a number of districts to the west, and taking them into pro-GOP Waukesha County.

Handrick’s group says their maps would result in a GOP advantage of around 56-43 or 57-42. Granted, those maps don’t have a list of district-by-district statistics, so we can’t see how close the races are or are not (in other words – not all 56-43 advantages are the same), but it doesn’t look weird and seems to be in line what a straightforward map would be, and their 2020s map keeps more Milwaukee-area districts on their own sides of the county line.

After the People's Maps Commission released their maps, Handrick responded by saying his group's maps actually was better in representing racial minorities than the People's Maps did.

The federal courts in 2012 approved and/or drew 6 African American assembly district and 1 Latino district (a second district became majority voting-age Latino over the course of the decade). They also maintained 2 African American senate districts that had been created by the courts in 1992 and preserved the courts in 2002...

2 of the plans eliminate one of the Latino districts, reduces the African American districts from 6 to 4, and eliminates one of the two African American senate districts. The third plan actually eliminates both African American districts.

Granted, two of those Assembly districts that Handrick says was "eliminated" still have a majority of People of Color, and it looks like both of the currently Majority Black districts still are more than 50% non-white. And Handrick is clearly floating this out there as a way to try to give cover to WisGOPs to ignore what has been drawn up by the People's Commission.

But there is a legitimate underlying point. The 2020 Census shows that Milwaukee lost quite a bit of population, which means that the City will have fewer districts in this next round of redistricting, and the Black population declined by more than 8,000 in the 2010s, so there will likely be fewer seats with a Black majority in the next maps.

When I drew up my Assembly maps (see this post for how that ended up), racial makeup was one of the few factors I kept in mind, and I ended up with 5 districts with Black majorities, 2 with Latino/Hispanic majorities, and 1 other Assembly district that was more than 50% non-white (in Racine). In the Senate, I couldn't get 2 majority-Black districts, but got 3 that were majority non-white (one was 44% Black, one was 42% Hispanic/Latino).

With that in mind, I think a small tweak to the People's Maps to find another couple of Assembly districts that are majority-minority would be fine, and the larger point is that even Handrick's GOP group sees that a 62-seat Republican gerrymander is something that would face voter blowback. If the GOPs weren't drunk on power, they'd offer up something like the Handrick maps, and still be an overwhleming favorite to stay in power.

What’s also especially useful with all of these maps that have come out is that if/when Robbin’ Vos and Devin Lemaheiu come back with some kind of 2010s-style monstrosity in the coming months, they can’t fake innocence and can be accurately called out for the manipulations they try to put in. And we know just how to blow holes in whatever absurdity they try to come up with.