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weeks.
The battle lines are drawn once
again over voting district
lines, this time Wisconsin
Congressional Districts.
Republicans have blasted the order,
but the Wisconsin Supreme Court
assigned a pair of three judge
panels to hear two lawsuits
that argue that the state's
congressional maps must be redrawn
because they are unconstitutionally
favoring of Republicans.
Six of the state's eight districts
are currently held by Republicans.
Thanks for having me.
So in your expert view, do
Wisconsin congressional maps
unconstitutionally favor
Republicans?
Well, they certainly favor
Republicans.
Whether that's constitutional or not
will be an issue for the courts.
You know, there are eight districts
in the state.
Six of them are held by Republicans,
two of the seats held by Democrats,
and it's been that way for a while.
That's one of the contentions, at
least in one of the cases, is that
it's been a durable and predictable
outcome.
The drawing of those maps, which
really began in twenty eleven under
Scott Walker and Republicans,
continued essentially with a least
change version of that after the
twenty twenty census, that it has
locked in a six two majority.
So in that sense it's certainly
tilted towards Republicans.
So other than the six
two district margins,
what stands out about these maps?
They're not competitive.
At least four or six of those
seats are unlikely to be held by
anything but a Republican or
Democrat, sort of regardless of who
those people are and what the
campaigns are like and what the
issues are like.
We know well in advance the second
district, the eighth district,
who what kind of party is gonna
represent those seats.
Only two of the seats, the first
and the third, are anywhere near
competitive. We have Republican
incumbents in both of those
districts. They lean Republicans,
so there's always a possibility of
an upset there, but even those
have been been reliable for
Republican victories.
Why was congressional redistricting
kind of left off the table when
Wisconsin redrew and
then passed into law a new
legislative matter?
We don't know exactly because the
Supreme Court wasn't transparent
about that. There were lawsuits
brought to the Supreme Court
focusing on the state legislative
districts and the congressional.
They took up the state legislative
districts, and that eventually
resulted in new lines being drawn
for the Assembly and State Senate.
The congressional maps they decided
not to touch and sent them back
really without any message as to why
they were not taking them up.
It now in retrospect seems to be
something about the process because
those same groups came forward
essentially with similar lawsuits
but now filed in Dane County Court.
That's following an old process from
2011.
We might talk about that maybe
is where the court was telling those
litigants to go.
Because what kind of a precedent is
there for the Wisconsin Supreme
Court to order circuit judge
panels to hear the cases challenging
these maps?
Well, it hasn't been done before,
and that's because the law that
enabled it was passed in twenty
eleven, ironically, by Scott Walker
and Republicans, when they were
unhappy that Democrats seem to
be filing suit in Dane County
repeatedly where they thought they
would get a favorable hearing from a
judge there.
This requires that any case
that has to do with the
apportionment or districting at
the congressional level or the state
level has to result in three
judge panels being appointed by the
Supreme Court.
And those judges can't all come from
Dane County. They've got to be
scattered across circuits around the
state. So that's what the court did
last week in creating two of these
panels to deal with the two cases
before them.
So in in the national redistricting
battle, are those efforts about the
actual fairness of of maps
or directed toward partisan
advantage?
It's all partisanship, I would say,
at this point.
And that comes also from the Supreme
Court, which before this latest
round of districting back in twenty
eighteen, twenty nineteen, dealt
with a case that ended up with the
court saying any level of
partisan shenanigans in drawing
districts, at least for Congress,
under federal law, is completely
fine. That's not a matter of law,
it's not a matter of constitution.
So it's noteworthy that these two
cases in Wisconsin are under state
law and state constitutions, going
to the state supreme court.
So the litigants have decided to
steer clear the federal courts
because there's no longer a remedy
there, at least when it's about
partisanship.
Because how does the decision just
released by the US Supreme Court
on Texas maps inform
what happens with redistricting
going forward?
Alright, so Texas is where this all
began. This is a really strange
era we're in that many states
are redrawing maps in the middle of
the decade. We're sort of halfway
between the last census and the next
census. Texas began with maps
that were drawn to favor Republicans
by adding about five seats there.
That would also take away about five
seats from Democrats, so a ten-point
swing. Those maps were declared
illegal, a violation of the Voting
Rights Act. The U.S.
Supreme Court yesterday decided to
allow those maps to go forward,
partly because they thought the
court, the federal court, intervened
too close to the primary in Texas,
which comes up very quickly.
Candidates are fi are beginning to
file already just next week to
get in.
And they weren't convinced that it
was going to be a violation of the
Voting Rights Act anyway.
So it looks like the new map in
Texas is back on and all of the
activity in the other states is also
happening.
So does that kind of create an arms
race of changing maps
across the country?
It does. So Texas was first.
The respon the main response to that
was in California, where Democrats
decided to override their
commission that draws districts by
having a ballot proposition.
They've now created new districts
that add about five Democratic
seats. So essentially canceling
out what Republicans did in Texas.
Now we've got Missouri,
Florida, Virginia,
maybe Maryland, maybe Illinois,
Indiana, some other states, Utah,
because of a court ruling there.
There's a lot of redrawing, and it's
not clear in the end which party is
going to be advantaged, but it's the
most partisan manipulation of this
process we have ever seen.
In Wisconsin, is there
any chance in your mind that
new congressional maps
could be drawn before the midterm?
It's hard to see how that timeline
gets met. We're just now beginning
to have hearings and you know and
so and some motions and filings for
those three judge panels that were
appointed.
There's gonna have to be evidence
brought, the judges are gonna have
to rule over those cases.
If they decide the congressional
maps need to be struck down, then
new districts need to be created by
some process, either the state
legislature or the governor, or the
courts appoint someone to do that
process. It all needs to be in
place probably by the end of March
so that candidates know where to
file. The filing deadlines in June
for a primary in August.
So this was a you know a crunch
when the state legislative districts
were re redrawn two years ago,
but the final maps were adopted
around this time.
The rulings were just around
Christmas time and the maps came
shortly thereafter.
We're behind that schedule.
It seems very difficult to get that
done in time.
All right. Well Barry Burden, thanks
so much.
Thanks for having me.
Question in which I had and
I tossed.
In terms of this kind of mid cycle
or mid, you know, ten year census,
how rare is that?
Very rare.
Since so in the nineteen sixties
there were these Supreme Court
decisions that were the one person
one vote decisions that equalized
the populations of districts.
Since that era, this doesn't happen.
It happened once in Texas, if you
remember under Tom DeLay, there was
a sort of scandal there and they
tried to redraw them and Democrats
left the state.
Other than that, it doesn't happen.
Unless a court intervenes and
there's a ruling that the districts
are violation of law.
In the eighteen hundreds it happened
a lot. It was a sort of the Wild
West and states were some of them
were redrawing the districts every
year. Nice.
But we're in an era where that
should not happen.
So what do people like you, experts
in in this realm, think
about what you're seeing now?
Well, I think it's harmful.
It's it's gonna it has a few
negative effects.
So one is it's gonna turn
California and Texas and Indiana
and Maryland into one party states.
There are gonna be very few
Republicans from California, maybe
no Democrats in Indiana, maybe
no Republicans in Virginia.
So in the aggregate, maybe
the Congress will look like the
country, but state to state it's
gonna be very imbalanced and there
are gonna be a lot of people who are
not represented adequately.
Another harm is I think what it does
to public opinion, that everyone
is watching both sides doing this.
So there's a there's a both sides
ism in this.
Everybody does it, everything is
fair game.
What's next?
So it's today it's drawing
districts.
In the House there have been a
couple special elections this year.
The new member who was elected in
Tennessee on Tuesday was
seated within a couple of days.
Even those el those elections have
not even been certified yet.
So that was a Republican.
So Speaker Johnson was very eager to
get that person in.
The Democrat who was elected in a
special in Arizona wasn't seated for
about fifty days.
So there's that kind of those are
just hard bar politics that now seem
totally okay because it's part of
the partisan gamesmanship that's in
the districts and everywhere else.
Interesting. Well even if you were a
good government type, right, and and
thought that this is not how this
process should go,
once somebody does it, you know,
like California California, yeah.
Yeah, and you know, Democrats feel
more tension in this.
They want to do the right thing by
good government, but they also don't
want to get beat.
Right.
So Republicans don't feel any
tension, they feel like this is the
right and proper thing to do and
Trump is asking for it.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Well thank you.
Thank you so much.
Oh,
M Marissa just said that they
were still recording when we talked
about after I said
thank you.
They want she wanted to know if we
could use a chunk of that online.
Yeah. Yeah, if it seems okay
to you, it's fine with me.
Okay.
Thank you. All right.
What's your step on our diasp?