Wisconsin Republican state senators made a final attempt on Tuesday to avoid having new political maps in place reviewed by the state’s liberal Supreme Court.
Republicans introduced and passed new legislative voting maps they say are representative of the ones Gov. Tony Evers (D-WI) filed to the Supreme Court.
The state Senate was slated to vote on a bill that would have implemented an “Iowa-style” legislative redistricting process — putting the new maps in the hands of a nonpartisan Legislative Reference Bureau rather than the lawmakers. However, that bill’s original language was nixed and amended by Republican state Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu to include new maps. While LeMahieu said the maps were based on Evers’s, the maps were not reviewed by Democrats before the Senate floor session.
GOP state Rep. Pat Snyder told Wisconsin Right Now that the Senate and Assembly are “trying to do our best and take our best shot at keeping the majority” because “who knows what’s happening Feb. 1.” Independent experts hired by the Wisconsin Supreme Court have until Feb. 1 to review the maps, which can be passed by the legislature and signed into law by Evers or drawn by the consultants themselves.
Evers spokesman Britt Cudaback responded to Snyder’s comments on X, writing the GOP lawmaker “said the quiet part out loud to a right-wing blog” and that they “aren’t the governor’s maps.”
“This is about one thing: Republicans desperately trying to retain power. Full stop,” Cudaback wrote.
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Following the 2020 census, congressional district lines were redrawn by states to align with the most recent data. In the redistricting aftermath, legal battles across different states have broken out in contention over the maps, mainly on claims of partisanship.
Democratic voters filed the redistricting lawsuit in August, shortly after liberal Justice Janet Protasiewicz was sworn in, resulting in the GOP asking Protasiewicz to recuse herself from the lawsuit based on her personal beliefs that the maps are unfair. Last month, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled the current Republican-drawn maps are unconstitutional, an order from the newly liberal court that could have major implications in the 2024 election.
