Contact: Patrick Rodenbush
rodenbush@democraticredistricting.com
Today, a judge in Wisconsin ordered Governor Scott Walker to issue a writ within five days that calls special elections for two seats in the state legislature. The National Redistricting Foundation (NRF), a 501c(3) affiliate of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee (NDRC), supported plaintiffs residing in State Assembly District 42 and State Senate District 1 in the litigation. Governor Walker had no intention of calling special elections for the seats, meaning they would have been vacant until January 2019.
Following the ruling, Eric H. Holder, Jr., Chairman of NDRC and 82nd Attorney General of the United States, released the following statement:
“This is an important victory for the impacted citizens of Wisconsin who have gone without representation because of Governor Walker’s refusal to call special elections. One of our most basic rights as American citizens is that we get to vote and have representation in our legislatures. Governor Walker’s actions have undermined that right and it never should have taken legal action to force him to do his job.”
On December 29, 2017, Representative Keith Ripp and Senator Frank Lasee both resigned from the Legislature to take positions in Governor Walker’s administration. Since that time, Governor Walker has refused to call special elections to fill the vacancies even though he has a plain legal duty to fill them “as promptly as possible.”
