US Voting Rights Fight Comes To Wisconsin

The US Supreme Court overruled the conservative state Supreme Court of Wisconsin in approving an election map because it had one too many black districts on it.

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Sam: Wisconsin another assault on the voting rights act. And the court has been I mean it's getting just nakeder and nakeder it's it feels like. in terms of the way that they're dealing with this. But tell us about Wisconsin first.

Guest: Yeah so I mean everything about this Wisconsin story is gross. So Wisconsin for the last 10 years has not had democratic elections. like the Wisconsin state assembly. The Wisconsin state legislature is so gerrymandered that it was basically impossible for Democrats to win.

Sam: 52 the democrats won something like 52% of the vote in the last election. and they have 35 out of 100 representatives. so 52 of the vote ends up providing them 33 or 35 of the representation. It's just insane.

Guest: it's bonkers. So yeah, the first thing that the Wisconsin supreme court does which has a 4-3 republican majority on it is it says that. you so the governor and the legislature deadlock on what the new map should look like the state supreme court says well whatever the new maps are we want maps that most closely resemble the old maps. so they're already trying to lock in these maps that favor republicans. and then they say to the governor in the state legislature propose some maps to us and we'll pick the one that's most similar. And Tony Evers the democratic governor sort of grits his teeth and says well okay that's what I'm gonna have to do I'm gonna try to make the best of it. and he tries to draw the best map that he can within these very republican favorable constraints. and it gets up to this to the state supreme court again and justice brian Hagedorn I think is how he pronounces his name is kind of like the john Roberts of Wisconsin. like he's a very very conservative judge. But he sometimes crosses over and votes with the liberals and he does that here. He says like well under the standard that we announce to make it as similar as possible to the old maps Tony Evers the democratic governor's maps win. so we are going to adopt the democratic governor's maps. The thing about those maps is that the old maps had six majority-black districts. Evers's maps had seven majority-black districts. and this goes up to the u.s Supreme court. and the u.s Supreme Court I mean it's a very confusing decision. but basically what they say is before you're allowed to draw an extra majority-black district you have to first show that you considered all the other alternatives that only have six majority-black districts to make sure that like those aren't going to. I mean it's very unclear what you're supposed to do but like basically placed a presumption that like you should keep it to six and like only if you can't achieve the goals of the voting rights act or whatever with six are you then allowed to have seven. Now I mean I've read the constitution. I've read the voting rights act. and I'm pretty sure that the 14th amendment was not enacted to diminish the power of African-American voters. you know it wasn't enacted to prevent states from giving slightly more political power to black people. you know I'm pretty sure that's not what this is about. but that's what the supreme court said.