New redistricting legislation could cause real elections to break out in the Wisconsin Legislature.
Lining it up
By
Rep. Spencer Black
On January 3 of this year, in the ornate Assembly chambers of the state Capitol, 99 legislators raised their hands and were inaugurated as the members of the 2005 state Assembly. All were there by virtue of their victories in the November elections. But for many of those legislators, that November victory did not come as much of a surprise because they had either no opposition or only a token opponent. A big reason there are so many one-sided elections is that legislative districts are drawn to overwhelmingly favor one party or the other, making competitive elections in most districts virtually impossible.
On the next day, across town, in a setting noticeably less ornate than the Assembly chambers and with considerably less pomp, more than 1,000 Wisconsin citizens convened the People’s Legislature. They came together in the express desire to fight for “a healthy, functioning democracy that allows the collective voice of the people to be heard loud and clear at the Capitol.” These folks, of whom many had come considerable distances and at the cost of a day off of work, joined together because of the feeling that their state government no longer belonged to them.
The attendees at the People’s Legislature adopted four resolutions for their reform agenda, resolutions that are intended to take power away from lobbyists and the entrenched political establishment and return that power to the public. One of those four resolutions called for an end to the partisan redistricting in Wisconsin that makes elections for the Legislature and Congress non-events in much of the state.
I have introduced legislation that will take the job of redrawing congressional and legislative districts away from the Legislature and the governor and give it to an independent commission.
Having watched the redistricting process up close as the Assembly minority leader during the last redistricting, I have concluded that when politicians draw the lines they have only one thing in mind: getting themselves re-elected. When politicians redraw their own districts, the process takes longer and costs more. The public would be better served by objective, non-partisan redistricting that puts the people first instead of the politicians.
When incumbents draw their own districts, one of the three things happens. When one party controls the entire process the result is a gerrymander that unfairly gives one party control, not by virtue of the people’s will, but through the clever exercise of creative cartography, a practice pioneered by Massachusetts Governor Eldridge Gerry. The most notorious recent example of the gerrymanderer’s art was in Texas, where Tom Delay muscled through a redistricting plan that gave the Republicans six extra seats in Congress.
The second possibility is where partisan power is split and self-preservation of incumbents is the aim. This happened in Wisconsin this last go-round where the Democratic and Republican Congressional members cut a deal which virtually insures the incumbents will win and that there will be four Democrats and four Republicans representing Wisconsin in Congress, at least until the next redistricting. The most enduring gerrymandering deal, however, is in the New York state legislature, where the Democratic Assembly and the Republican Senate have drawn the map so that each party retains control of their house. The district lines have been so manipulated that the very same voters consistently elect a strong Democratic majority in one house and a Republican majority in the other.
The third possibility is what happened with the Wisconsin Legislature. Here, partisan gridlock led the two parties to hire a legion of lawyers at taxpayer expense to battle in court. The redistricting battle in 2002 cost taxpayers almost $2 million in legal fees; money that could have been much better spent on education, health care or the environment.
The reason the People’s Legislature picked redistricting reform as a priority is that the current system basically writes the voter out of the process. In many districts, including my own, the voter goes to the polling place in November only to find that the choice of their elected representatives in the Legislature and Congress has already been decided by the astute drawing of district lines.
It does not have to be this way. Iowa finished their redistricting a year before Wisconsin and never paid a dime in legal fees. They have managed to redistrict after the 1980, 1990, and 2000 censuses without a court fight. Of course, many incumbents in Iowa faced tough races and the voters had a real choice. Wisconsin can learn a lot from our neighbor to the west. Arizona and New Jersey have also adopted non-partisan, independent redistricting.
My legislation would have the non-partisan Legislative Council develop a new redistricting system for Wisconsin based on the best of what is in place in Iowa, New Jersey and Arizona. In addition to giving us back competitive elections, independent redistricting could save the taxpayers money. It is time to replace the partisan game of redistricting with a non-partisan, independent process that will put the voters’ interests first.
March 13, 2005
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Spencer Black is the representative for the 77th Assembly District in Madison. He is the Democratic Leader on the Assembly Natural Resources Committee, and is the author of the Stewardship Fund, the Mining Moratorium, and the Recycling Law.
