As you probably know, a Democrat recently won election to the Wisconsin Supreme Court, giving them a majority. They immediately took up a lawsuit challenging the state's infamously gerrymandered legislative maps and ruled yesterday that the maps had to be redrawn.
Bob Somerby is confused by what happened, and that naturally got me curious. It turns out the main issue is a fairly simple one: In Wisconsin it's common for cities to annex nearby areas that are separated from the main municipality. Here's an example in the Madison area:
These annexations are known as "municipal islands," and the question is whether they can be included in legislative districts, which the state constitution says must be contiguous. The majority ruled that contiguous means contiguous, and municipal islands don't qualify.¹ The minority says they've traditionally been considered "politically contiguous" and no one has ever suggested otherwise—and the sudden about-face from Democrats is just cover for their desire to redraw maps they think are unfair.
And that's about it. There are a few other details, but they don't really matter. The primary question is whether to change existing precedent on municipal islands, and you can make a perfectly good case for either side. Nobody really wants to say this out loud, but it's pretty obvious that the previous Republican court ruled in favor of Republicans and the new Democratic court has ruled in favor of Democrats. Neither side is especially imbued with either virtue or villainy here.
But as I was reading through the opinion, what really startled me was the middle-school temper tantrum tone of the dissent. I've never read anything like it. It was written by Annette Kingsland Ziegler, who spends 30 pages (!) on spittle-flecked vituperation before she even bothers to address any of the legal questions. Here's a taste:
This deal was sealed on election night.... the four robe-wearers grab power.... judicial activism on steroids.... wrecking ball.... end-justifies-the-means judicial activist approach.... power grabs by this new rogue court of four.... unlawful power grab.... underhanded and unprecedented manner.... conniving and then implementing.... grab all the power they could find.... four rogue members.... Power at any cost is the new normal for this crew.... window dressing.... preordained.... judicial fiat.... unreviewable "consultants".... hand-picked cover for the court of four's decision to throw out "rigged maps".... partisan political power grabs.... mind-boggling contortion of the law.... political quest masquerading as a legal query.... sham experiment.
It actually sounds worse if you read the whole thing, and it's followed by a remarkable seven-page personal screed targeting justice Ann Walsh Bradley, airing out beefs that go back 20 years. This is interspersed with a lengthy and aggrieved defense of the Republican court's previous decision, which the Democrats overruled.
So, anyway, that's Wisconsin these days.
¹What's more, the majority says that because municipal islands are so widespread—they're found in 50 out of 99 Assembly districts and 20 out of 33 Senate districts—it's not practical to redraw just those districts that contain them. The entire map needs to be redrawn from scratch.
"Neither side is especially imbued with either virtue or villainy here."
Bullshit, Kevin. Just bullshit.
How is it with Republicans in power, they were able to get super-majorities in a state which is split just about 50-50?
I'm pretty sure Kevin means neither side is clearly right on the specific technical and legal question of whether contiguity for these "municiple islands" is constitutionally valid, not more broadly on whether republicans are gaming the system more broadly with their gerrymandered maps.
That's definitely what KD means, but he's still wrong. The plain language is clear. If everyone's allowed to do this, there won't ever be a single red seat in Oregon, Washington, California, etc.
Not so sure about that. Back when the Democrats controlled redistricting in California, their emphasis on incumbent protection left seats on the table (so to speak). When an independent commission took over the job, the Democrats wound up with much larger majorities.
(Okay, demographic changes probably helped, but still.)
Washington has a bipartisan redistricting commission. The reason we have so few Republicans in office is because the quality of Republican candidates overall is quite poor.
Yeah, there are big, contiguous areas that definitely trend red.
Here in Vancouver, WA where my mom lives, the Republicans lost because they decided to defeat their previous centrist candidate and nominate a Nazi. He lost in the general.
Like, that's not really a euphemism. He hung out with Nazis, the Proud Boys, and his slogan was America First.
Wel you got https://gluesenkampperez.house.gov/about which would be sort of ok, but she should lean more left...
I would prefer more left, yeah.
I understand that politics is compromise, though.
Why should municipal boundaries matter at all in state-level districting? Maybe for county councils it makes some sense, but even there creating compact districts with the least total boundary length should be the primary determinant that a districting is "fair". The political tendencies of the voters within them should, honestly, be ignored.
The rule should be that contiguous districts with populations within a percent (or whatever is agreed) should be created with the least total boundary line lengths, given precinct boundaries which should also be mandated to minimize boundary lengths.
Any other method of drawing district boundaries is doomed to corruption in our age of super-computers.
Exactly. It's not like Republicans were being even handed about it, either.
I don't think fairness is as simple as compact and contiguous. Gerrymandering is way worse since computers came in because they can analyze millions of maps to satisfy an algorithm.
You can write a program prioritizing contiguous, compact, and Republican. And you will get a biased map.
tomtom, You can't program prioritising contiguous, compact and Republican if you ALSO produce a goal-seeking program which attempts to minimize the total borders among the various districts in accord with "one person one vote" requirements. There is a bit of allowable variance in those requirments, and they can be programmed as a limit in the goal-seeking.
A system like that would produce left-leaning districts in urban areas, right-leaning districts out in the country and swing districts in suburbs. Over time it would drag both parties to the center, because the only way to win a mandate would be to impress those swingy suburbs that your team offers the better deal.
One other factor, which often goes unreported, is that there are decent sized native American communities in some urban areas -- 45% of the states native Americans (principally Menominee but also Ojibwe and others). In many cases those native American communities have been split between two or more legislative districts. Now, this might just be a coincidence that just kind of happened all on its own in a few different municipalities, or it might be that the GOP majority simply doesn't care whether or not native Americans are seen as a political community worthy of representation, or it might have been a purposeful strategy to dilute the voting power of a group that typically leans D. In any case, if it happened in the South, and the group so disadvantaged was African-Americans rather than Native Americans, the federal courts would have been involved before the state Supreme Court got a say.
When Walker got into office, and they finally got control of the supreme court, the Republicans went hog wild to lock in their position at the expense of democracy.
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I'm really disappointed that the court ruled on this little technicality of discontinuous districts instead of on the larger issue ... the districts were clearly anti-democratic (and anti-Democratic). The court had a chance here to law down a principle that elections - and districts - shouldn't be political because they exist for democracy, not for a party. Get back to some version of algorithmically drawn districts that create districts of equal population in the tightest possible configuration.
I thought about the same thing, but I'm guessing the justices ruling to overturn wanted to rule on a very specific technical issue that is clearly stated in the state constitution to try to avoid SCOTUS taking up the issue on appeal. SCOTUS can now avoid the controversy and say it's a matter for Wisconsin state courts based on Wisconsin state law. If they ruled based on a more general principle scotus might feel obliged to take it up, particularly since I believe they've already ruled political gerrymandering is not unconstitutional. (i think, but maybe i'm wrong on that)
I totally agree with Kahner. Picture this: You’re on the Supreme Court of your state. An issue of some real significance comes to your court for adjudication. The law and righteousness are both on the same side. You’re going to rule on that side.
Will you support your ruling by citing the righteousness of that position, or will you support your ruling by citing black letter law enshrined in the Constitution of your state?
What, are you kidding??? If you don’t know the answer to that question it’s amazing you passed the Bar, let alone got to be a judge.
I get it ... but am I wrong in thinking that all this ruling does is declare THIS one particular gerrymander unconstitutional? If Rs (or Ds) come up with a gerrymander that passes this test ... well, we still have gerrymanders.
This SCOTUS is chicken**** and afraid to actually defend the principles of democracy ... but its given us the situation of gerrymanders that are done "properly" are legal.
you're right (i think) that all this ruling does is declare this particular gerrymander unconstitutional, but that's why it will hopefully stand. there's a limit to what wisconsin courts can do if scotus sits poised to overturn them.
The U.S. Supreme Court did not rule that gerrymandering is Constitutional. It said that the courts shouldn't adjudicate the issue, because of the difficulty of drawing a line to determine what was an unconstitutional gerrymander and what was not.
well, if SCOTUS declared partisan gerrymandering non-justiciable, then in practical effect they've ruled it constitutional at the federal level.
Exactly. That is why the Wisconsin Court was forced to concentrate on contiguity. That word is in the State constitution.
The Wisconsin is not calling the gerrymander unconstitutional at the federal level (each State shall have a republican form of government) because the Supreme Court has ruled that argument unarguable (not justiciable).
Not exactly. What the then (2019) five member right wing majority found in Rucho v Common Cause was something far more morally and legally dubious. In the words of Justice Kagan's great dissent, the majority:
...appears to accept the "principle that each person must have an equal say in the election of representatives." Ante, at 2501. And indeed, without this settled and shared understanding that cases like these inflict constitutional injury, the question of whether there are judicially manageable standards for resolving them would never come up.
So the only way to understand the majority’s opinion is as follows: In the face of grievous harm to democratic governance and flagrant infringements on individuals’ rights—in the face of escalating partisan manipulation whose compatibility with this Nation’s values and law no one defends—the majority declines to provide any remedy. For the first time in this Nation’s history, the majority declares that it can do nothing about an acknowledged constitutional violation because it has searched high and low and cannot find a workable legal standard to apply.
Yup
Agree 100%.
I noticed the same vituperative language, which is par for the course with republican politicians but seems out of place in a judicial decisions. But Wisconsin supreme court justices are elected, so I'm not surprised the conservative justices on the court are just as big assholes as any other republican elected official in a position of significant power. That's what makes you popular with the republican electorate.
It's not out of place in far too many Republican judicial opinions, though.
Too many worship at the Church of Scalia and write their fanfiction dogma accordingly.
Ziegler and Bradley have been primal screaming since the election. This is just how they communicate. Full on RepubliKarens.
'politically contiguous' sounds like the very definition of gerrymandering.
In other states it’s a limitation on gerrymandering. Admittedly only a slight limitation, but nevertheless a limitation that’s universally practiced in the other 49 state.
How is it a limit on gerrymandering? Isn't the arbitrary inclusion of a distant population precisely gerrymandering?
'Contiguous in spirit' would seem to act only to create cloistered populations incapable of reaching agreement on anything.
CLD, you might assume I chose my words correctly. In my vocabulary, "limitation" is not synonymous with "elimination." And "distant" is not synonymous with "discontiguous."
The dictionary definition of contiguous is “actual contact”. These districts clearly are not. Now I guess it would reasonable to allow for political islands to be part of the greater unit they belong to for representation (or not, cities are divided in all kinds of ways), but is so then the constitutional provision needs to be rewritten. The disallowed interpretation does violence to the language.
The gerrymandering in Wisconsin is so offensively undemocratic (Republicans have super-majorities despite less than 40% of the vote) that I imagine the only way to rationalize it is to go hyperbolically partisan in its defense.
That was my thought also. Caught red-handed, generally thieves will vehemently deny wrongdoing and accuse the victim.
There's more to it than just that, I think.
The fascist wing of the Republican party (mostly dominant now) has been filing lots of what I think of "fantasy court cases" to go along with their other political fantasies. They look weird to normal people - think Sidney Powell.
But the point is to have a ready-made official narrative when the hammer falls. You can think of it as sort of buying a put. If Stumpy manages to get to the white house, you can retroactively claim vindication.
This is exactly it.
The temper tantrum gives away the game: it was never about reasonable legal arguments, it was always about stealing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_United_States_House_of_Representatives_elections_in_Wisconsin suggests they did better than 40%. Of course that is Congressional. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Wisconsin_State_Assembly_election also suggests they did better than 40%, and did not achieve a super-majority. Which for Wisconsin appears to be 2/3.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Wisconsin_Senate_election suggests they did achieve a super majority in the state senate. And took-in more than 40% of the vote.
I'm not trying to suggest there was no gerrymandering, just quibbling with the 40% bit.
It was pretty close, tho.
Here's a pretty good take on the matter, commenting on both gerrymandering cracking and packing as well as self-packing, i.e. Dem's move to cities.
https://law.marquette.edu/facultyblog/2021/02/why-do-republicans-overperform-in-the-wisconsin-state-assembly-partisan-gerrymandering-vs-political-geography/
“ The minority says they've traditionally been considered "politically contiguous" “
“Traditionally been considered…” is an argument to make in an OpEd piece or a discussion in a pub. In a courtroom what we do is cite first principles and precedents.
"Traditionally". Yeah, this from the party that constantly flouts tradition, spitting in the eye of established law and practice.
The many-paged yowl from Justice Ziegler was the whinge of jeopardized privilege. George Conway (III) notes that he likes to read the minority opinion first, as it gives him a feel for how strong the negative case was. In the Colorado ballot issue, and most definitely in Wisconsin redistricting, the minority puts the weakness of their case on full display. When all you've got is ad hominem, you got nothin'.
On, Wisconsin!
There's more that's wrong with the WI districting map, but it's probably not immediately actionable. Many assembly districts sprawl unnecessarily across multiple counties. A given district might straddle the boundaries of counties A, B, and C and yet not contain the entire territory of any one of those counties. However, the state Constitution doesn't contain language that prohibits that. It DOES say that districts are to be contiguous. So you go with the challenge you have.
Since county boundaries are the result of LEGISLATIVE ACTION [i.e. the Leg creates and/or abolishes them] they should NEVER be included as a consideration in redistricting. It's yet one more way for the cheaters to enable their future cheating. Only major geographic features -- large rivers, mountain ranges, deserts -- should in any way affect the placement of boundaires. Least total boundary length should be the determinant, consistent with equal population totals.
Just a reminder, no matter the reason for rejecting the current maps, that means new maps must be drawn...and as per court order, approved by both the legislature and the governor or the court will step in.
'Both Side'ism' is ingrained so deeply in us...
One group wants to ignore the clear language in the consitution, but the other wants to ignore our history of ignoring the clear language in the constitution. Both Sides!
Opposite approaches are actually the same thing! Both Sides!
Barring black kids from school and barring white guys from barring black kids from school....its the same thing! Neither side has any virtue! BOTH SIDES!
Lol, goodness. We are screwed.
Apropos of nothing, when the New Mexico League of Women Voters updated its redistricting position, we tried to include in "contiguity" the requirement of not unnecessarily crossing various geographic barriers. Like one Albuquerque-area district straddled Sandia Crest, a 10,000 foot high barrier that it required a 50 mile drive around the mountain to get from one side of the district to the other.
Yes, geographic barriers are important to include, but it does sometimes mess up the ideal of least district border length.
Just how far back in time do these “politically contiguous” districts go in Wisconsin?
I invite everybody to look at the district maps for themselves:
https://maps.legis.wisconsin.gov/
Be certain to "zoom in" on the urban areas to get the full effect.
Funny how the rural districts look pretty normal but Democratic-leaning urban areas are all knots of spaghetti, eh?
A master class in "packing and cracking"
The specific legal issue may be contiguity, but WI is gerrymandered so that a 50:50 electoral result gives ~2/3 of the seats to Republicans. That strikes me as pretty villainous. The state constitution says "contiguous" and the Republican members of the court would completely change their minds about how to interpret that term depending on the advantage it affords to the Republican Party, as the spittle-flecked dissents indicate. I think it's ok to say that the new majority is in the right on this one, Kevin.
I am still waiting for someone to come up with an objective definition of fairness in setting districts. If a state is 60% one party and 40% another it is apparently unfair for every district to have that same proportion of voters. But if the parties are distributed evenly throughout, attaining the same proportion of districts as voters could be very difficult, or attainable only with very convoluted and (discontinuous?) districts. And how do we go about apportioning on the basis of race as well as or instead of party?
What if there are ten districts and more than 10% of voters belong to some minor party? How could that party get its own district? In practice minor parties are excluded - is that fair?
The convolution or contiguity of districts could not be the criterion for fairness if the objective is to give proportional representation to the parties in the legislature or in the electoral college.
In some countries legislators are just apportioned according to the overall popular vote. There are obvious disadvantages to this ("I vote for the person, not the party" - they say), but it seems more likely to work in states than in the US as a whole.
In my mind "fair" would mean "blind to political affiliation of the residents." Give a neutral body the map and have them draw compact, contiguous boundaries that enclose comparable populations. No matter what they draw, someone will complain and some of them might have legit suggestions but anyone who asks for some weird disjoint exception is obviously playing politics.
In fact, it might be smartest to turn the first draft over to a piece of software that is given no political affiliation information about the residents.
https://www.districtbuilder.org/
https://districtr.org/
https://medium.com/districtbuilder/districtbuilder-a-free-software-tool-for-redistricting-2d4bc3f31bd8
" Give a neutral body the map and have them draw compact, contiguous boundaries that enclose comparable populations. "
1) Give a computer instructions to draw 100 maps, based on equal number of voters and compactness (taking into account geographic features), and some random "seed".
2) Allow each non-overlapping group of 5% of the legislators to remove 3 maps. This step should eliminate the most biased maps that happened to come out, leaving at least 40 maps.
3) Select by random the final map.
Maybe add a step of non-partisan experts removing any objectively bad map that the software came up with.
It was just a cursory look at the website, but it seems to be given information about race, which while certainly imperfect, is a proxy for political affiliation.
Could well be, but I have used and written a lot of software over the last 45 years and doubt it'd be hard to write all ones over the "race" field so that it doesn't impact the results.
Yehouda's definitely got the right idea.
And when one party is almost exclusively the domain of one particular race whose proportion of the electorate is shrinking, it behooves that party to "correct" the outcomes of elections which go against it, right? Because the people who vote for that illegitemate other party aren't "Real Merkans" anyway, are they?
They just don't understand what "self-government" means, do they? It's sad, really, but we have to keep the Blood of America pure so that God won't smite us during the Last Days.
Something like what you write was widely proposed. A program generates a large number of simulations based on non-partisan criteria. These maps are compared against the actual map for the prior election. If the actual map is way off the peak of the bell curve the map would be considered to have partisan bias.
https://newrepublic.com/article/118534/gerrymandering-efficiency-gap-better-way-measure-gerrymandering
https://www.commoncause.org/democracy-wire/background-common-cause-v/
https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/7/11/15949750/research-gerrymandering-wisconsin-supreme-court-partisanship
Google "efficiency gap"
I recall the Supreme Court rejected all this with a sneer. Can't be using any gobbledegook social science in Court, after all.
The Supreme Court was looking for a way of deciding if the existing map is gerrymandered clearly enough for the SC to interevene (at least that what they claimed they were doing).
What I am suggseting is a way to generate the map such that it is not going to be gerrymandered, and you don't need to apply any scienetific or statistical checks.
In fact, a logical conclusion from the SC conclusion would have been to make it mandatory to use a method that prevents gerrymandering, because otherwise you are allowing legislatures to defy the constitution by giving some voters more power (and hence denying equal protection).
Sometime in the past you could say that is too difficult, but not now. For example there is my suggestion, and there may well be better methods.
Won't the GOP just redraw contiguous maps to enshrine their majority? Esp. as it seems like there is indeed a 50/50 split which is fine for extreme gerry mandering. I think the problem for the GOP is once the population begins to shift, it's harder and hard to keep the gerrymander. Just losing the super majority will help WI and not sure there are enough Dems to do that. I'd guess not. OR maybe the strategy is to force a 'bad' map and have the Gov veto it and them NOT have time to overcome the veto? And THEN the court will make "better" maps that are more fair?
If the court lets them. However the court might create the map, they have the power to so rule.
It only takes one election to flip the script. If the Democrats get in once they can lock it down just as hard, making sure their biased maps have contiguous districts, etc. And I hope they do. The Republicans were sloppy or greedy and allowed a colorable challenge. Don't make the same mistake.
Thanks, Supreme Court, this was all predictable. If enough states flip the script and Democrats predominantly benefit from partisan gerrymandering the Supreme Court will change its mind, but that is what it would take.
Ironically, the only way to move this country towards democracy is for the Democrats to outplay Republican anti-democratic games and yet remain uncorrupted. Yeah, I know that isn't usually how it plays out.
Neither side is especially imbued with either virtue or villainy here."
Just not right Kevin. WI is the apex of partisan gerrymandering, where 60%vote blue and the Leg is 70% red. Even if Blue states due it, nothing comares to those numbers. There's no Both Sides here.
I'm not disputing the gerrymandering, but where is the 60% voting blue coming from? Or the 70% red for that matter.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Wisconsin_Senate_election
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Wisconsin_State_Assembly_election
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Wisconsin_gubernatorial_election
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_United_States_House_of_Representatives_elections_in_Wisconsin
Two further points for consideration. Often, certain geographical areas secede from a main thus creating the polka dot maps. The main reason for this is to avoid school integration and thus non-contiguous districts occur due to racism. I don’t know if this is what’s happening in Wisconsin. The second point to consider is that maybe all the over the top impeachment talk was because the Republican legislators knew that the non-continuous maps were very suspect (for obvious reasons). Like some posted, it would be interesting to know the history of “political contiguous” especially, how often the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled on the matter and the composition of those Courts and whether a very narrow tailored necessary exception lead to the current albatross.
" ..that maybe all the over the top impeachment talk .."
Why maybe?
They knew that the Democratic majority will rule against them, and were going to stop it any way they could get away with. In the end they decided they cannot get away with impeaching just-elected judge.
Why are "Municipal Boundaries" even a consideration for STATE-level representation. It's VOTERS, not City governments that State Representatives and Senators should represent.
The remedy is scrutin de liste: the parties publish lists of candidates -- in this case, they would be statewide -- in order of [the party's] preference, then votes are cast for the parties, and for each party's percentage, you go that far down their list. The system has exactly zero mindshare in the U.S., but it is the necessary response to a situation in which all voting is negative-partisan. The most familiar example of its use is in Israel, where it works poorly because there are too many parties; they are only just recently figuring out how to do joint lists. But there can only be two American parties: high-population-density and low-population-density.
Oh and by the way, "Justice" Ziegler needs to be methodically mocked out of public life and out of the state.
Transferable vote would do the job too, and would be easier to do in the US (as Alaska showed, for example).
The open primary in Alaska almost seems more important than the ranked-choice final election
It is the elimination of the old primary systsem which is the deciding issue, which you can reasonably do only if you have some kind of transferable vote.
They don't actually need the primary anymore. They can just ask candidates to deposit some amount of money which they lose if they don't get more than x% of the point (1 - 5 %), which will stop the list of candidates from becoming too long.
"It is the elimination of the old primary systsem.."
On more thinking that is not actually true. Transferable vote can cope with old-style primaries, because if the two main parties go to extremes, a central candidate not of the main parties have chance to win. In the long term it will either pool the main parties to the center, or create a third party at the center.
In the case of Alaska, I think it is obvious that both the senate and the House election would have ended with the same result even if they still had old primaries. The only difference is that Murkowsky would have had to run as independent, but she would still win with the same votes. Begich would either run as independent or not, wouldn't affect the result either.
re General Election, the best part about RCV is that it's majority win, not plurality win. Since you bring up Murkowski, she "won" with 44% of the vote in 2016 and only 39% of the vote in 2010. In the 2010 race I guarantee you that all the McAdams voters would have put Murkowski as their second choice in opposition to Joe Miller.
As for 2022, the R party leadership wanted Tchibaka in the worst way and in a closed primary my guess is that she would have won, leaving Murkowski to try the write-in campaign thing again.
Of course, Tchibaka and Palin both think the RCV system is "cheating," which is why they are trying to get it repealed. Using dark money and with fake churches as fronts, as usual.
Drum clearly wonders whether this decision will be challenged up-the-line. He's probably correct. Would the Supreme Court shoot down this decision?
Since it advantages Democrats, of course they would. Consistency is the hobgoblin of junior attorneys. Justices in their full pomp are freed from the petty bonds of tacky "precedents" and "settled law".
By whom was it "settled"? THAT is the determinant of its value, nothing else.
As discussed in previous messages, the decision is based on the text of the state constitution of Wisconsin. SCOTUS will have to find something the dederal constitution or laws to be able to intervene. That will be far further than it went until now.
I suspect one reason this practice wasn't challenged sooner is the effects on electoral outcome were meaningless for either side, but after the GOP took over they blatantly exploited the norm to cobble together their majorities and super majorities.
Also, I have no doubt the GOP legislature will try to minimize the damage, if they even bother to submit a map - not doing so being a favorite tactic these days. But they need to take care they don't violate other rules in the State constitution while doing so.
As a Wisconsin resident I must say it's not surprising Ziegler would write in the manner of toxic spewing talk-radio host because that's exactly the milleau that her career has been in and it's par for the course for the kind of people who were either elected or appointed to the court by former Gov. Scott Walker.
Turn the clock back to 2008 when the Dems controlled the governor's office and the state legislature and Obama was poised to have the biggest Dem win in Wisconsin since LBJ in 1964. Reactionaries in the state, largely driven by talk-radio hosts and the Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce realized they would be completely shut out of any political decision-making unless they found a statewide office to win and found on the State Supreme Court. Where had once been genteel, low-turnout non-partisan races where Dems and Reps would often endorse the same candidates, became partisan slugfests and thus the liberals were caught flatfooted when incumbent justice Louis Butler was beaten that year in a low turnout late summer election by Patrick Gableman, the same Gableman who GOP State Assembly Speaker Robin Vos had to disown and even attack for his botched investigation into the 2020 elections the GOP in the state legislature itself initiated.
So when the tables are turned all the Right can do is whine and cry - that the tables are turned. They were the ones who changed the natures of state Supreme Court elections so now they can live being in the minority after making such elections partisan contests.
However, just because the maps are going to be re-drawn does not mean the Dems will immediately win a majority in 2024. The party's collapse in rural and exurban areas is very real and the GOP will likely retain a majority, albeit by not the same large numbers and close enough that in a Dem wave election they could take control. Maybe the party can revitalize itself in such places knowing such seats will be competitive once again. We shall see.