What's next with Wisconsin voting maps? Breaking down the Supreme Court experts' report
MILWAUKEE (CBS 58) -- The outside consultants hired by the Wisconsin Supreme Court to review six proposed sets of new legislative maps concluded in a report two of the maps are worse than the other four.
The two inferior maps came from the Republican-controlled Legislature and the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL), a conservative law firm.
The hired experts, Bernard Grofman from the University of California-Irvine and Jonathan Cervas from the Carnegie Mellon Institute, labeled the two GOP-leaning maps as "partisan gerrymanders."
While the Wisconsin Constitution doesn't list partisan fairness as a requirement for the state's legislative districts, the Supreme Court, which has a 4-3 liberal majority, listed it among the criteria it gave experts. The court noted partisan bias would not supersede constitutional requirements as a factor.
John Johnson, a research fellow at Marquette University, concluded each of the six proposals were constitutional in the sense they met the most basic two mandates: Have districts with similar population sizes and ensure those districts are contiguous, meaning the district is contained within a single set of borders.
However, the consultants' report found the conservative maps to be faulty in some of those areas. Johnson's analysis aligned with some of that conclusion while finding other areas were more open to interpretation.
Did the conservative maps meet constitutional requirements?
Grofman and Cervas concluded the Legislature's map shouldn't even be considered by the Supreme Court. Before partisan bias could even become a factor, the experts noted how the lawmakers' maps split counties and municipalities far more than any other proposal.
The Legislature's maps split 114 municipalities on its Assembly map. The second-highest amount was 72 in the Senate Democrats' proposal.
Between that and the partisan lean, the experts wrote the Legislature's map "does not deserve further consideration."
As for the WILL map, it had the fewest municipal and county splits. The consultants acknowledged that, but they also noted it split more wards than the others.
Within the report, it's notable the consultants found the WILL (Johnson) map performed worse than the Dem/liberal maps on "bound by" data.
— A.J. Bayatpour (@AJBayatpour) February 2, 2024
Yet, analysis by @jdjmke found WILL and Law Forward performed best on "compactness" and minimized county/municipal splits: pic.twitter.com/HlhvNJy53n
Both Johnson and the experts noted the significance of ward splits was subject to debate because under Wisconsin law, wards can be redrawn once legislative boundaries change.
Given a tight turnaround before the 2024 election, Johnson said maintaining the current wards could be a consideration for the court.
Addressing partisan bias
The experts measured the districts' partisan lean by using past statewide elections from 2016 and 2022 as a measuring stick. Those included presidential and U.S. Senate contests, as well as races for governor, attorney general, secretary of state and treasurer.
Johnson said measuring "partisan neutrality" comes down to a single question: How do you define fairness as it relates to legislative elections in a swing state where a candidate capturing 52 percent of the vote is essentially a landslide?
"Many people think fairness is, 'Well, the party that gets the most votes should get the most seats,'" Johnson said. "And so, that definition of fairness is at stake in this decision."
The consultants found the Democratic/liberal maps fared much better at producing legislative results that would match the statewide vote total.
Conservatives maintain the state's liberal voters being mostly clustered in urban areas puts Democrats at a natural disadvantage. The experts' analysis found the four maps they favored still leaned toward Republicans but by a significantly smaller margin.
Doug Poland helped draw the "Clarke" map, which was submitted by five left-leaning entities, including his current firm, Madison-based Stafford Rosenbaum, and Law Forward, which he co-founded.
Poland said the maps demonstrated the ability to create balanced maps that still adhere to constitutional principles. The Clarke map has the second-fewest municipal splits.
"It's possible to draw districts that meet all these constitutional criteria and actually still score well in terms of political neutrality," Poland said. "And [the experts] said four of the plans do that and two of them don't."
In a statement, WILL blasted the experts' report, maintaining it "hides its bias behind faux sophistication." A spokeswoman for the conservative firm said no one was available for an interview Friday afternoon.
In a January interview, WILL President Rick Esenberg maintained one would have to gerrymander in Democrats' favor to produce a near 50/50 map. He argued drawing a map without specifically aiming for partisan fairness would produce results in line with WILL's.
"What you get when you do that, given the political geography of the state, is a map that projects a Republican majority," Esenberg said. "Although perhaps not one which is quite as robust as what we see in the Legislature today."
To achieve maps with the most partisan balance, districts would have stretch from blue clusters in Dane County out into rural areas well beyond Madison. In Southeast Wisconsin, districts reach out from inner Milwaukee suburbs, like Wauwatosa and West Allis, into Republican leaning ones, such as Brookfield and Waukesha.
The conservative maps, in comparison, pack those liberal voters into more compact districts in Dane and Milwaukee counties. Conservatives argue the liberal proposals violate the "communities of interest" principle, but the consultants refute the claim, concluding "in Wisconsin, geography is not destiny."
So, what happens next?
Grofman and Cervas noted the court could ask them to improve one or more of the districts. They could also use their four preferred proposals as the base of a new map they'd draw.
The experts said they were confident they could take the current proposals and improve their performance in constitutionally mandated areas.
Johnson said there's another possibility: The Legislature tries to pass Gov. Evers' maps without any edits and sees if he would sign them.
Republican lawmakers passed maps very similar to Evers' last month, but they made changes to protect some of their incumbents who'd otherwise have been drawn out of their districts.
Evers vetoed the measure, but Johnson said Republicans might think it's worth seeing if he'd sign the exact maps he submitted to the court.
"Of the four [Democrat-friendly maps], from what I've seen, the Evers map is the best for Republicans," Johnson said. "It's not a huge difference, but I would say it creates the most seats that they would feel they had a good shot at winning a majority in."
The Wisconsin Elections Commision insists it needs new maps in place by March 15. That would give candidates in newly-drawn districts to collect ballot signatures, and it'd give clerks enough time to prepare for the legislative primary elections in August.