- Wisconsin Republican Speaker Robin Vos on Tuesday denounced Democratic proposals to redraw congressional maps as “political gerrymandering” and threatened to appeal the controversial redistricting case to the U.S. Supreme Court.
- The submitted map is currently being revised by the liberal-majority Wisconsin Supreme Court.
- “My hope is that the court, based on a fair interpretation, will reject the maps that have been submitted that are heavily partisan,” Vos said.
Wisconsin's powerful Republican legislative leaders on Tuesday denounced the Democratic proposal as “political gerrymandering” and threatened to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, even as the liberal-controlled state Supreme Court rejected the new constitutional law. He stated that he hopes to adopt the legislative boundary map of the United States.
The court threw out the Republican-drawn map, long considered the most Republican-friendly in the country, and ordered one party to draw a new map that does not favor the other party. He said if Congress doesn't adopt the map, the courts will.
Assembly Speaker Robin Vos said Republicans have approached Democrats about passing new maps in Congress, but “there hasn't been a warm reception to the idea.”
Wisconsin Republicans would maintain a majority on proposed legislation, but their advantage would decline
“We are ready, willing and able to engage in that process,” Boss said at a news conference.
Democratic Congressional Minority Leader Greta Neubauer questioned Vos' integrity.
“While we always welcome dialogue with our colleagues, we are not confident that Republican lawmakers are serious about passing fair and representative maps, especially in light of the extreme gerrymandering they filed in court on Friday,” he said in a statement. I'm still not convinced that we're working on it.”
Wisconsin is a purple state, with four of the past six presidential elections decided by less than 1 percentage point. But under the legislative map that Republicans first enacted in 2011 and then re-enacted with few changes in 2022, Republicans had a 64-35 majority in the Assembly and a 22-11 majority in the state Senate. .
Democratic Gov. Tony Evers vetoed the map passed by the Republican-led Legislature in 2021, prompting the then-conservative Wisconsin Supreme Court to adopt the map currently in use. . The court then took liberal control and threw out the map last month.
Wisconsin Republican Congressional Speaker Robin Vos participates in a press conference at the Capitol on Tuesday, January 16, 2024 in Madison, Wisconsin. (AP Photo/Scott Bauer)
In a 4-3 decision, the high court said the current map is unconstitutional because not all districts are made up of contiguous territory. Some districts included areas that were not connected to the whole.
Republican and Democratic lawmakers, along with the conservative Wisconsin law firm Evers, the liberal law firm that filed the redistricting lawsuit, a group of math professors and a redistricting consultant proposed the new map on Friday.
According to an analysis by John D. Johnson, a research fellow at Marquette University Law School, the map submitted by Republicans would maintain the current 64-35 Republican majority, while other maps would narrow the Republican advantage to just one seat. right.
Vos rejected the map submitted by Democrats, saying it would move the boundaries too far and force incumbents to fight each other. He called them “nothing more than political gerrymandering.”
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Wisconsin's congressional districts are the second most Republican in the nation in the 2022 election, behind only West Virginia, according to an Associated Press statistical analysis aimed at detecting potential gerrymandering. Republicans received less than 55% of the votes cast for major party congressional candidates, but won 65% of the seats.
The submitted maps are currently being reviewed by two consultants hired by the Wisconsin Supreme Court. They plan to submit a report with recommended maps by February 1.
“My hope is that the court, based on a fair interpretation, will use the maps drawn by the professors, with significant partisan bias, and if it goes in that direction, it will reject the maps that have been submitted. Or, ultimately, we take it to the (U.S.) Supreme Court and demonstrate the huge political nature of what they did,” Vos said.
Asked when such an appeal would be filed and what arguments would be made, Voss declined to say.
“Our goal is not to rush to the U.S. Supreme Court,” Vos said. “We want to aim for a map that complies with the Constitution.”
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Republicans have indicated they intend to allege due process violations. Vos also argues in his appeal that the case should not have been heard by liberal Justice Janet Protasiewicz, who said during her candidacy that the current map was “rigged” and “unfair.” He suggested that it would happen. She sided with three other liberal justices on ordering the new maps.
