Redistricting

2024 Redistricting Background 

The redrawing of the state’s electoral maps is done every ten years. However, shortly after the investiture of liberal-leaning state Supreme Court Justice Janet Protasiewicz in August 2023, a lawsuit was filed by Democratic voters asking the court to declare the state’s legislative maps unconstitutional for several reasons, one being because some districts included pieces of land that were not connected. Several months later, in a 4-3 decision, the Wisconsin State Supreme Court ruled the state’s legislative maps were unconstitutional, finding that Article IV, Sections 4 and 5 of the Wisconsin Constitution require that state legislative districts must be composed of “contiguous territory.”

The court found that at least 50 of 99 assembly districts and at least 20 of 33 senate districts contained territory completely disconnected from the rest of the district and therefore violated the contiguity mandate, rendering them unconstitutional. The court ruled that because the non-contiguity issue impacted the majority of legislative districts it was “necessary to enjoin the use of the legislative maps as a whole, rather than only the non-contiguous districts… and remedial legislative district maps must be adopted.” The court went on to say that if the Legislature produced maps signed into law by the Governor that remedied the contiguity issues, “there would be no need for this court to adopt remedial maps.” However, the court noted that if the “legislative process does not result in remedial legislative maps, then it will be the job of this court to adopt remedial maps.”

As part of the remedial redistricting process adopted by the court, litigants in the case were given the opportunity to submit proposed legislative maps that complied with the new standards set by the court. The court hired two independent consultants to analyze the map submissions based on several criteria and provide a report on their findings. After the parties had submitted their maps, the consultants analyzed the submissions and concluded the four maps supported by Democrats largely complied with the Court’s mandated criteria and were “nearly indistinguishable” from each other, while the two submissions backed by Republicans were dismissed as “partisan gerrymanders.” Legislative Republicans, concluding the court would likely approve maps that significantly favored Democrats, passed a set of maps based on Gov. Evers’ submission, but with less incumbent pairings. However, the governor promptly vetoed those altered maps. Two weeks later, Republicans passed Gov. Evers’ maps without any changes, which the governor signed into law on February 19.

The major impacts of the new legislative maps include:

• A total of 21 incumbent pairings across the legislature
• 19 legislative seats swing from GOP-lean, to DEM-lean according to 2022 top of the ticket results.