I'll stand by.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court just rejected the motion for reconsideration.
For more on the process moving forward, we turn to Barry Burden, Professor of Political
Science at UW-Madison, and Director of the Elections Research Center.
And thanks very much for being here.
Glad to be with you.
So as we've mentioned, the deadline for submitting new maps was today.
There are the legislature's maps and the governor's maps.
What happens now?
Well, parties will have submitted the maps, and then those parties can offer responses
to the maps from the other side over the next week.
So those reply briefs will come in in the next seven days.
And then essentially all of that material gets handed to the two consultants that the
court decided would evaluate the material and they have until February 1 to do their work.
So at what point would the governor, for example, have an opportunity to veto the legislature's
maps?
Yeah, that's a little unclear to me.
The parties in the case may submit proposals today, but it seems very unlikely that there
would be a full legislative process.
So I think we'll just have to wait and see what gets submitted.
My guess is that the executive branch and the legislative branch will have different
ideas and we'll submit maps separately without bothering with much of a legislative process.
And yet this is on a major fast track.
It is moving very quickly.
You know, the decision came down on December 22 just before the Christmas weekend.
The court hopes and the Wisconsin elections commission hopes to have everything done by
mid-March so that maps are in place before the August primaries later in the summer.
So it is moving at a good clip.
Is it expected in your mind that the court's consultants will actually draw these voting
maps from scratch in the end here?
I think that's likely, but there is a lot of ambiguity in the court's order.
It's said that the consultants should evaluate the maps that are proposed by the parties
in terms of whether they meet all of the traditional criteria, plus the additional criterion
of having no partisan impact.
But the court does not define what they mean by that.
I think that the consultants have some good concepts to rely on from work they've done
in other states and academic work on measuring the bias in maps, but they will have to come
up with standards essentially to evaluate whether those criteria are met.
It seems unlikely that any one map would meet all of the criteria in a clear black and
white way.
And so the consultants will probably be led to produce some kind of maps of their own.
So as to the criteria, what will the maps have to look like for the court's approval
here?
Well, they will meet the criteria that the maps have met in the past.
For example, having equal populations in each district complying with the Federal Voting
Rights Act to ensure the voting rights of racial and ethnic minorities, trying not
to split counties and municipalities unnecessarily.
This time around, they will also have to make sure there aren't any separated pieces of
territory.
All the districts need to be contiguous in a kind of literal fashion on the map.
And then this additional criteria they've added of no partisan impact, meaning the map
looks sort of neutral or the way an uninterested party would have produced the maps.
So my guess is the districts will look somewhat different from the ones we have today.
They will certainly shake up where incumbents end up because that's not part of the consideration
for the map makers.
So thrown out was this requirement of lease change from the last go-around.
Yeah, that was a major statement in the court's opinion that they didn't want to essentially
reaffirm the existing biases in the map.
And they demanded that the maps be drawn from scratch in a way that is politically neutral.
So not advantaging one side or the other and adopting a lease change approach they viewed
as essentially locking in existing biases in favor of Republicans.
What is the expectation that the remedial voting maps will, in fact, be in place in
time for this year's election?
I think it can happen.
This is a new process for the state Supreme Court.
They've not produced maps in this way before.
It's an accelerated time schedule, so it needs to be done essentially within the month
of February to have everything in place in early March.
I think it's very possible for consultants to do that.
I think it's a question of how fast the court can operate when it evaluates the maps.
It ends up getting from the consultants.
But given the technology and the familiarity with all of the interested parties here, I
think maps can come together pretty quickly.
In the end, how might remedial maps change the political landscape in Wisconsin?
I think the number one effect will be shaking up incumbents.
Districts today are drawn with incumbents in mind.
They are players in the process in the state legislature, so they have their own interest
in mind.
There are some parts of the state where incumbents' home addresses are very close to one another,
and yet the districts have been drawn to ensure they're in different districts.
We should expect lots of places where incumbents get thrown in together into the same districts
or are forced to make hard decisions.
I think that impact will be bigger than the partisan impact, which will surely advantage
Democrats but not probably put both chambers immediately up for grabs for both parties.
All right.
Barry Burton, thanks very much for your expertise.
Thank you.
Thanks.
Sorry about that question.
We had Governor Evers on our error a couple weeks ago, and he said, or last week was it?
He said, well, I'm certainly going to veto their maps, right?
And so he said, it's very likely that I would veto their maps.
So I'm really, that's one of the things I'm trying to wrap my head around, how is it?
Then does that happen?
Yeah, I agree.
I don't see a place for it in the process, so I don't know.
All right.
Well, thank you.
I'm glad I asked.
All right.
Thank you.
Stay safe and stay indoors.
Yeah, safe travels to you back home later today.
Oh, thanks.
It's a short trip.
Thank you.
Good.
Thanks a lot.
See you later.