On Gerrymandering

Under the US Constitution, the federal government conducts a nation-wide census in every year divisible by 10 (most recently 2020, pandemic or no). And in the year or two after that, when the census results are available, every state in the nation is required to readjust the boundaries of its various electoral districts, for everything from city councils up thru state legislative districts and US Congressional districts (but not US Senate districts, since those are the entire state and not subject to subdivision).

If a state’s legislature and governor are all controlled by the same political party, they usually draw these new maps to favor their own party. This is done by “packing and cracking”. Packing entails cramming as many voters for the opposition party as possible into a few districts, leaving the voters who favor their own party in slight but secure control of many other districts. Cracking involves breaking a center of opposition politics into small pieces and attaching each of them to a larger chunk of territory which can outvote them.

Traditionally, both major parties have done this. But they did it inefficiently, using pen and paper, guesswork about allegiances, and maybe slide rules or calculators. Then along came computers with detailed, highly granular demographic information, and gerrymandering was raised from an art to a science. No longer was it necessary to come up with easily caricatured legislative districts like the original one, formulated by Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts in 1812:

Nope. Take a look at Wisconsin Assembly Districts 13, 14, 15, and 84 in southeastern Wisconsin:

Each one’s approximately rectangular, right? No obvious shenanigans, trickery, or bizarre contortions visible. But nonetheless gerrymandered, because they were purposely constructed so the ~55% to the west in conservative Waukesha County would always outvote the ~45% to the east in more left-leaning Milwaukee County. This is a classic example of cracking, and it’s why, as the Wisconsin State Journal reported after the November 2020 election, “Democratic candidates received 46% of total votes cast in state Assembly races, but ended up with only 38 of 99 seats after winning two new districts. In state Senate races, Democratic candidates secured about 47% of total votes, but only picked up 38% of the seats on the ballot and now control only 12 of 33 seats.”

Good-government advocates think this is unfair at best, undemocratic and subversive at worst, and they’d like to find a better way of doing redistricting than letting a single party control all the shots. (This is one of the few examples of bipartisan agreement in America. Democrats in Illinois are trying to tilt the playing field in their favor using the same techniques that Republicans in Wisconsin did a decade ago.)

And so those good-government groups are trying to raise public awareness of the issue by coming up with graphics like this one:

It’s easy to see that the red minority gains an unfair advantage (60% of the representatives based on the support of only 40% of the citizens) under the map at the right, with its oddball boundaries. What’s often overlooked is that the map in the middle is equally gerrymandered, except to favor the majority blue party (100% of the representatives from only 60% of the electorate). But those nice, neat boundaries are deceptive. Nothing jumps right out at you visually as indicating that there was nefarious intent. Compare these to the actual Wisconsin map above.

That’s what computers can do for you.

To our west, Iowa has had a non-partisan redistricting commission for 40 years, and Iowans love it. If such a commission (or an impartial court) in Wisconsin were to look at the above example, it might well come up with a map like this, in which the representation of reds and blues reflects the will of the people:

Unfortunately, politicians have thick skins and aren’t likely to experience much shame when confronted with the question “Why do you have to cheat to win?” Only when the citizenry takes gerrymandering to be a serious offense against democracy and turns it into a make-or-break issue when voting for legislators will we ever truly achieve the noble goal articulated by Sen. Robert M. La Follette Sr.: “The will of the people shall be the law of the land.” 

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Q1: Which of these have you heard the least about? 

 A) Cheating in the Olympics: doping 

 B) Cheating in football: deflategate 

 C) Cheating in baseball: stealing signals 

 D) Cheating in politics: gerrymandering 

Q2. Which one will actually make a difference in YOUR life?

Republicans Want To Kill You

Let’s be blunt. Republicans hate it when people vote — especially the "wrong kind" of people.

Their loathing for democracy was most clearly stated by right-wing guru Paul Weyrich, who laid out the case for voter suppression back in 1980: “I don’t want everybody to vote. ... Our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.”

Acting on his advice, Wisconsin Republicans, in thrall to their corporate overlords and campaign financiers, have done everything in their power to throw roadblocks in the path of voting: blatant gerrymandering to dilute opposing votes; restricting hours of voter registration; limiting the areas where volunteers can register voters or the times when DMV offices can take your picture; moving primary elections from September to August so college students can’t vote; closing or constantly changing polling locations (especially in minority areas), preferably to places without public transportation; and of course the notorious and completely unnecessary photo-ID requirement.

To Republicans the current COVID global pandemic was like manna from heaven. It could be lethally dangerous for strangers to cluster in groups of 10 or more, so they could let nature do their dirty work for them by scaring citizens away from the polls. But only if the election were held as originally scheduled.

That’s why, given a special session of the Legislature during which they could have postponed the election (as 15 other states have done) or adopted a sensible alternative like all-mail-in voting (as Gov. Evers proposed), they literally didn’t give a minute’s consideration to either. “Vote if you dare” was their attitude.

So if you’re a public-spirited citizen who wants to vote — or an elderly poll worker who’d like to help you do it — remember: Republicans don’t just want to stop you, they want to kill you if you try.

Mike McCabe, Democrat (?) for Governor

Mike McCabe, Democrat (?) for Governor
Suppose you’re a Democrat wrestling with which of eight candidates you’d like to support for governor, and you’re looking into this McCabe guy. “Why him?”, you might be wondering. “He spent his early career as a legislative aide to Republicans, has never been a dues-paying member of the Democratic Party, and refuses to take a loyalty oath to support the party’s eventual nominee.”

All true, and exactly why he deserves your support. Ask yourself this: “Do you consider yourself a citizen first or a Democrat first?”

Primary elections are dividers, not uniters. They drive the Democrats toward the bluest, most liberal contenders and the Republicans toward the reddest, most conservative ones. Whichever candidates emerge from this process will have the undying devotion of a fourth of the electorate, the unremitting hatred of another quarter, and massive indifference from the half that’s in the moderate middle. No wonder modern American politics leaves us so fractured and divided.

Mike McCabe is a realist. He knows that third-party candidacies are not only futile, they serve to further fractionate us. That’s why he’s running in one of the major parties, but not as a blind loyalist of it. It’s also why he’ll have broad appeal come the general election, and why he’d govern as a cost-conscious, trans-partisan uniter.

Mike’s #1 issue is getting big money out of politics, whether it’s liberal dollars from George Soros or conservative megabucks from the Koch Brothers. His appeal is to those of us in blue jeans.

In this, he’d follow in a noble Wisconsin tradition. Pat Lucey, a highly successful realtor with a healthy respect for the profit motive, ran and governed as a humane Democrat who promoted governmental efficiency. Lee Sherman Dreyfus, a college chancellor from the liberal world of academia, ran as a Republican and surrounded himself with top-quality advisors who weren’t partisan activists. Wisconsin’s longest-serving governor was Tommy Thompson, a self-described “hick from Elroy” who was able to work with urban Democrats on welfare reform, increased school funding, negotiated firmly but fairly with the state employees’ union, and brooked no nonsense from the extremist factions in his own Republican Party.

We need another governor like this today. Fortunately, one’s available. His name is Mike McCabe.


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The question will arise, and arise in your day, ... which shall rule — wealth or men? Which shall lead — money or intellect? Who shall fill public stations — educated and patriotic free men, or the feudal serfs of corporate capital?

— Edward Ryan, Chief Justice, Wisconsin Supreme Court, addressing the UW graduating class of 1873