The GOP’s Gerrymandered Grip on Wisconsin Elections Is About to Break

For more than a decade, Republicans had Wisconsin carved up into one of the worst partisan gerrymanders in the country—practically ensuring GOP control over the state legislature, despite losing 14 of the last 17 statewide elections. No longer. On Monday, Democratic Governor Tony Evers approved new district maps for the upcoming November election in what supporters hailed as “progress towards true democracy” in the key swing state. “Wisconsin is not a red state or a blue state—we’re a purple state, and I believe our maps should reflect that basic fact,” Evers said in a statement. “The people should get to choose their elected officials, not the other way around.”

“The long, dark night of ultra-partisan gerrymandering is over,” added Wisconsin Democratic Party Chair Ben Wikler. “A new day for democracy now dawns in the Badger State.”

The move by Evers comes after the state Supreme Court declared the current, GOP-friendly map unconstitutional. Its newest justice, Janet Protasiewicz, cast the deciding vote in that decision; the liberal won election to the open seat last spring in what was widely seen as a referendum on issues of democracy and abortion rights. “The mainstream Wisconsinite wants to have a right to choose,” as Protasiewicz told me ahead of that election, “and wants to have fair maps.” Voters affirmed that in the election last April. “This election changes everything,” Wikler told me afterward.

A day after Protasiewicz joined the court, democracy advocates filed a lawsuit challenging the Republican-drawn maps; the 4-3 liberal majority overturned the gerrymander in December, allowing Evers to redraw the maps. Though Republicans still control the legislature, they approved the Evers map last week, weeks before a March deadline. “It pains me to say it, but Gov. Evers gets a huge win today,” Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos said. “The legislature will be up for grabs.”

That holds a great deal of significance for Wisconsin, where Republicans have been “laying siege to democracy itself” since 2011, as Wikler put it Monday. But it could also resonate beyond Wisconsin, which will host the 2024 Republican National Convention this July. The state was crucial Joe Biden’s 2020 victory—and a focus of Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn his loss, which the Republican legislature supported with an absurd partisan “audit” into the results that dragged on well into 2022. The new maps, then, are a “victory, not for me or any political party, but for our state and for the people,” Evers said Monday. “It is a new day in Wisconsin.”