- This week, our partners at WisContext landed
in the middle of the gerrymandering lawsuit
before the high court
because Republicans filed an amicus brief in the case
citing analysis from the UW Applied Population Lab
that looked at the density of voters by county in Wisconsin.
But was that analysis published in a WisContext report
an apples-to-apples argument for justices to consider?
We ask its author, Malia Jones.
Thanks for being here.
- Thanks for having me.
- How surprised were you that your research
and analysis ended up in this amicus brief
on the part of the RNC?
- We were very surprised.
That is certainly not something I expected to have
as an outcome and probably will never happen to me again.
- As we suggested, though, was this an apples-to-apples
application of your research to this gerrymandering case
in your opinion?
- It really was not because the amicus brief talks about
our report, which analyzed the population density
at the county level of Wisconsin,
and partisanship at the county level.
And this case is really about Assembly districts,
which are in some cases larger than counties,
and in other cases much smaller than counties.
So it really is not an apples-to-apples comparison.
- So what did your research show?
- So what we showed was that counties in Wisconsin,
like in many other places,
have become more concentrated in terms of partisanship
over time and especially urban counties
have become more and more Democratic-leaning over time.
Where rural counties, many of them remain mixed,
but overall becoming less Democratic over time.
- So that's what you showed.
How did the RNC use it?
- The RNC used this analysis to support their argument
that one of the two main processes that's used
to achieve gerrymandering, which is called packing,
is not something that the Republican majority
in the state legislature did on purpose,
but was just sort of a natural demographic process
related to how populations have changed over the course
of the decades.
And so they used our brief or our report
to support their argument that actually packing
is happening, happening sort of as a natural background
demographic process.
- Packing is happening as kind of a self-selection process?
- Exactly, so people are self-selecting
into urban places and that's why we see "packing"
in these urban legislative districts in places
like Milwaukee and Madison.
- But so how are these kind of political geographies
not equivalent, the county versus the legislative
boundary lines as drawn?
- So the main way that they are not equivalent
is that legislative boundaries are redrawn every 10 years,
specifically to respond to population change.
And we do that in order to maintain
the equal representation or the one person one vote rule.
So as urban places grow and rural places many times stay
the same in terms of population
or even decrease in terms of population,
the district boundaries have to be redrawn
in order to ensure that each person has about an equal
amount of representation in state government.
And so that, those Assembly district boundaries
are purposefully redrawn.
And they're done in this state by the party who is in power
at the time.
Whereas county boundaries in general,
they remain fixed except for exceptional cases
where something happens that changes the county boundary.
So they're just not at risk for manipulation
for political purposes.
- So did you have any discussions with either side
of this case about your analysis or the use of it?
- We did not have direct discussions with either side
of the case, but when we saw that the brief
had been filed by the RNC,
I really wanted to respond with my opinion
about whether that was appropriate.
And so we did publish a follow-up report
where we go into some detail about how equivalent
these two different kinds of geographies are
and why they really are not equivalent.
- And any response to that on your part?
Any response to your response?
- Not from anybody who's been involved in the case.
Although we've had a positive response from readers on it.
- So what do you expect to research
in regard to this issue coming up?
- Well, we'll be very interested to follow
the Supreme Court case outcome and see,
and especially see if we will be required
to draw new boundaries if the court upholds
the lower court's decision that
this was a case of gerrymandering.
- All right. Malia Jones, thanks very much for your work.
- Thanks for having me.