Several Northwoods counties have joined an effort to ask the legislature to have a non-partisan board draft the voting districts in Wisconsin as opposed to the long-time practice of having the majority party do it. The districts are redrawn every 10 years.
The U.S. Supreme Court will hear a case brought from Wisconsin whether the current districts were drawn to favor Republican candidates, a practice known as gerrymandering. Other states are asking the highest court to hear their cases where Democrats were said to have done the same thing.
Matt Rothschild is the Director of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign...
"...already 37 Wisconsin counties, that's half the counties in the state have passed resolutions urging our legislators down in Madison to change the way we do redistricting in this state...."
Among the Northwoods counties, Forest, Marinette, Oconto, Langlade and Lincoln counties have passed resolutions. Rothschild notes there aren't 37 counties favoring Democrats in Wisconsin, as a number of those already signed on come from mostly Republican counties.
He says there's an easy solution regardless of the Supreme Court acts...
"....the folks in Iowa figured out more than 35 years ago and that's to have non-partisan civil servants to draw the maps and forbid them from using specific criteria like demographic data that tells you how people are likely to vote for which party and so on. It works great in Iowa, why can't it work here?"
He says 29 counties have joined the effort in the last year. A coalition of groups have formed to push the legislature to give a public hearing to two bills that would reform the Wisconsin system.
He urged interested citizens to contact legislators to try to move Senate Bill 13 an Assembly Bill 44 toward a public hearing.
