and we lead it to victory in November.
for your time. >> Thanks for having me.
>> Next week, Zach continues his interviews
with candidates running for governor. Look for more of
his reporting on air and online in coming 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. The court
playing out in the midst of a national redistricting
battle, as President Donald Trump is trying to preserve
a slim Republican majority in the House in the 2026
elections. Director of the Elections Research Center
and professor of political science at UW-Madison,
Barry Burden is here with more. And thanks very much
for being here. >> Thanks for having me.
>> So in your expert view, do Wisconsin congressional
maps unconstitutionally favor Republicans?
>> Well, they certainly favor Republicans. Whether
this 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, that the drawing of those maps,
which really began in 2011 under Scott Walker and
Republicans continued essentially with a least
change version of that after the 2020 census, that
it has locked in A62 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 for 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
party is going to 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 Republican, so
there's always a there. But even those have
been reliable for Republican victories.
>> Why was congressional redistricting kind of left
off the table when Wisconsin redrew and then
passed into law? New legislative maps?
>> 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. 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
2011, ironically, by Scott Walker and Republicans,
when they were unhappy that Democrats seemed 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
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 what the court did last
week in creating two of these panels to deal with
the two cases before them. >> So in the 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 2018
2019, 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 of the federal courts because there's no
longer a remedy there, at least when it's about
partisanship. decision just released by
the US Supreme Court on happens with redistricting
going forward? >> 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 US 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 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 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
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
midterms? that timeline gets met.
We're just now beginning to have hearings and, you know,
in some motions and filings for those three judge
panels that were appointed, there's going to have to be
evidence brought. The judges are going to have to
rule over those cases. If they decide the
be struck down, then new districts need to be
created by some process, either the state
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, you know, a crunch when the
were 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. Were behind that schedule. It seems