[Brookfield…] [Brookfield…] Common Sense Wisconsin has submitted a proposed redistricting map for Consideration by Governor Ever’s ‘People’s Commission” that implements the Commission’s own criteria.

Democrats are demanding a new map be drawn from scratch — they argue the 2012 legislative map is too partisan. Republicans say they prefer to follow past practice and begin with the current map (as the courts have done).

“We rolled up our sleeves and crafted a plan based off of the last map drawn by a non-partisan group, we didn’t take into consideration where legislators live or partisan outcomes,” said Joe Handrick, the executive director of Common Sense Wisconsin and one of the state’s foremost redistricting experts. “I don’t know if Governor Evers’  panel will even give our submission the time of day, or if the call for submissions from the public was mere window dressing. But if the Commission is truly non-partisan and sincerely believes in its own criteria, we just showed them the way.”

Common Sense Wisconsin notes that the 2002 map was entirely drawn and enacted into law by a non-partisan panel of federal judges. In that trial, the federal court chose to adapt neither the Republican or Democratic map. Furthermore, the court in 2002 spent a great deal of time and focus on properly drawing Milwaukee districts subject to the Voting Rights Act of the United States and then revisited and redrew those districts again in 2012.

Common Sense Wisconsin has taken this 2002 map and leveled out the population due to the changes reported in the US Census.

The result is a plan that is stunningly similar to the non-partisan plan put into place by the court in 2002 and a plan that scores exceptionally high on the objective, non-partisan criteria laid out by the Peoples Commission.

The Common Sense plan dramatically reduces the number of split municipalities and counties, improves compactness, reduces the splintering of Milwaukee County, promotes communities of interest, and adheres to the Voting Rights Act. Remarkably, it does all this while also achieving low population deviation.

“If Governor Evers is true to his word, he and his commission would embrace the Common Sense Wisconsin maps, he can’t deny that they meet his criteria, or at least his publicly-stated criteria,” Hadirick said.

See above for attachments, including details of the Common Sense Wisconsin Map Proposal.

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