Photo credit: Joseph David Bowes
Last week Wisconsin found itself in the world news headlines and unfortunately it was again for all the wrong reasons. Medical experts from around our state, our nation and the world could not understand why Wisconsin would force its citizens to choose between protecting their health and the health of the people they live with and exercising their civic right and duty to vote. While we and our neighbors are trying hard to practice social distancing and “stay at home” policies, the Republicans in the legislature are pushing in the opposite direction.
Republican legislators led by Robin Vos in the Assembly and Scott Fitzgerald in the State Senate—with the help of four highly partisan members of the State Supreme Court—have decided it would help the Republican supported candidates if the election went ahead and absentee voting was minimized. So, despite the fact that respected health care professionals believe that holding this election could set back all of their efforts and sacrifices to thwart the pandemic, Vos and Fitzgerald continued to pursue their perceived political advantage. Sixteen other states with scheduled elections have postponed their primaries.
So How Did Wisconsin Get So Partisan?
So we know “Why” the Republicans recklessly pushed forward with the primary. They are willing to put the voter’s health and possibly lives in danger to hold on to their power at any cost. But what about the “How”? How can they get away with doing this when the majority of voters did not want it done?
Unfortunately, the answer again comes back to the cancer that has infected Wisconsin in 2011 and that is the gerrymandered districts created after the 2010 elections when Republicans won control of all the levels of power. They then blatantly created the most gerrymandered state legislative districts in the country. A three-judge federal judicial panel ruled that Wisconsin’s legislative boundaries are illegal and unconstitutional, but nothing was changed.
So many of our problems in our state are a result of the hyper-partisanship in Wisconsin that was created when Vos, Fitzgerald and Walker made their terrible decision to create these very biased legislative districts. Since the gerrymander districts were created, there have been elections where Democrats in the statewide vote count for state legislators received over 200,000 more votes than the Republican candidates, but the Republicans ended up winning over 60% of the state Assembly seats.
The gerrymander redistricting created hyper-partisan districts where the incumbents didn’t have to worry about losing to the opposing party, but rather had to worry about getting challenged from the extreme in their party i.e. the extreme right for the Republicans and the extreme left for the Democrats. When you are not in a competitive district you have no incentive to move to the center and negotiate reasonable legislation. Instead you move to your extreme. If you don’t, you get challenged in a primary. After an election cycle or two with gerrymandered districts, you no longer have any moderates who are interested in working across the aisle and creating more fair and balanced legislation. It also elects extremists for their leadership which is why we have Robin Vos and Fitzgerald who are more extreme than any legislative leaders the past 50 years.
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Is Retaining Their Power All That Counts?
So, Vos and Fitzgerald can put Wisconsin’s voter’s health and lives at risk to maintain their power because their district are so safely Republican. They can continue to ignore the will of the people. For example, in the last election 80% of the Wisconsinites voted in an advisory referendum to legalize medical marijuana—another health policy issue—and Fitzgerald said “No.” He can just ignore the huge majority of the voters who want this change and parents of children suffering from severe epileptic seizures from getting this medication that is proven to dramatically improve this terrible condition.
Thirty years ago, Wisconsin was one of the most forward-looking states in the nation. Today it ranks at the bottom alongside states like Mississippi and Alabama on far too many important issues. Wisconsin needs to change and it must start with creating fair and competitive legislative districts.
Update: After putting Wisconsin citizens’ health at risk in a bid to win the State Supreme Court race, the GOP-backed candidate lost.
