Photo credit: Brittany Hogan
The U.S. Supreme Court is about to hear a case involving a politically corrupt action by the Republican-controlled Wisconsin Legislature that has the potential to become a landmark voting rights case for the nation. Whether it does or not will depend upon whether the Supreme Court is finally ready to outlaw the corrupt practice of partisan political gerrymandering. And, of course, that depends upon just how corrupt and politically partisan Supreme Court justices themselves are these days.
Both political parties have engaged in corrupt political gerrymandering historically. Wisconsin Republicans under Gov. Scott Walker have simply carried it to such outrageous extremes they’ve attracted serious legal scrutiny.
Every 10 years, after the U.S. completes a new census, states redraw the boundaries of legislative districts to reflect population changes. The 2010 census coincided with a tea party backlash election giving Walker and Republicans unchecked power to do their worst—and they did.
While hundreds of thousands were demonstrating outside the Capitol against destruction of union bargaining rights, an even more far-reaching attack on democracy was quietly taking place right across the street in the private offices of the Republicans’ law firm of Michael Best & Friedrich. Computer experts used sophisticated software calculating the effects of even the tiniest changes in the boundaries of the state’s 99 assembly districts and 33 state senate seats. After moving lines to squeeze every possible victory out of those districts, Republicans actually wiped hard drives to try to cover up what they’d done.
Violating Rights of Wisconsin Voters
A panel of three federal judges that ruled Wisconsin Republicans unconstitutionally violated the voting rights of Wisconsin citizens issued a stinging rebuke to legislators and their attorneys for trying to withhold evidence.
“Quite frankly, the Legislature and the actions of its counsel give every appearance of flailing wildly in a desperate attempt to hide from both the court and the public the true nature of exactly what transpired in the redistricting process,” U.S. District Judge J.P. Stadtmueller wrote. A forensics expert was able to use computer spreadsheets to trace Republican redistricting that began with existing maps that would have allowed Republicans to win only 49 of 99 Assembly seats.
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In the final decision, Stadtmueller wrote that after numerous manipulations of the maps Republicans were able to create new assembly districts so “Republicans would maintain a majority under any likely voting scenario; indeed, they would maintain a 54-seat majority while garnering only 48% of the statewide vote.”
Winning Even When They Lose
Get that? Even if Republicans won less than a majority of the vote statewide, they could still win 54 seats in the Assembly to only 45 seats for Democrats. Actually, the judge underestimated the success of the Republicans’ corrupt redistricting. The disputed maps were used in the 2012 election while legal appeals continued and the results were even worse. Republicans did win just more than 48% of the vote statewide: less than a majority. As a result, Republicans won 60 Assembly seats and Democrats only 40.
Creating a 20-vote majority in one legislative chamber for the losing party statewide is a drastic distortion of democracy. It also violates the Supreme Court’s constitutional principle of “one person, one vote” by giving far greater weight to the votes of Republicans statewide than to those of Democrats who actually voted in greater numbers in 2012.
This is achieved by the well-known and corrupt gerrymandering tactics of “packing and cracking”—packing voters from the opposition party into the fewest districts possible and spreading the rest of them across so many different districts they can never determine the outcome of an election. Most district elections are over before they start. Legislators choose their voters rather than voters choosing their legislators.
Such a corrupt result should be of concern to every Republican and Democrat who believes in democracy. In fact, many Republicans these days don’t even bother denying gerrymandering is wrong. They simply say Democrats would do the same if they had the chance. (In Maryland, Republicans are challenging corrupt gerrymandering by majority Democrats.) If both parties are politically incapable of upholding the principles of democracy and drawing districts to fairly represent the voting populations of their states, that’s exactly when the U.S. Supreme Court should step in to protect the constitutional rights of every American.
Until now, however, the Supreme Court has intervened to stop corrupt state redistricting when it’s been shown to be racially biased, but it’s been reluctant to act in cases based upon extreme partisan political bias. This could be the perfect time for a landmark voting rights case for two big reasons: One is simply the enormity of the gerrymandering in Wisconsin—seriously, a 20-seat Assembly majority won by the losing party statewide; the other is the efficiency of computerized gerrymandering puts such extreme political corruption within reach of any state.
The political corruption isn’t in question, only whether or not a majority of the U.S. Supreme Court has enough integrity to do anything about it.
