The column below reflects the views of the author, and these opinions are neither endorsed nor supported by WisOpinion.com.
Assembly Speaker Vos, the most power driven elected official in Wisconsin government, is leading efforts to impeach newly elected Supreme Court Justice Janet Protasiewicz because she criticized election district maps while running for office. These maps were drawn in secret under the direction of Vos over 10 years ago. Vos acknowledged in 2021 that partisanship was a consideration when drawing the new legislative maps.
These election districts have allowed Republicans to hold near super majorities in both houses of the legislature since 2011. Every two years all 99 Assembly seats are placed before the voters. With Vos’s maps in place Republicans have garnered around 52% of the votes cast in Assembly races across Wisconsin. However, they have repeatedly been awarded 63-64 of the 99 Assembly seats. Even when Democratic Assembly candidates won 53% of the votes cast; Vos’s maps only awarded them 36 of the 99 seats.
On the Senate side there are 33 seats contested every four years. And there has been a similar imbalance. In 2016, Democrats won more than half the votes cast in Senate races. Vos’s maps gave them only 11 of the 33 seats. Wisconsin Republicans control two-thirds of the legislative seats in a state that was essentially tied in each of the last two presidential elections. This is how severely partisan Vos’s maps have allowed one power driven legislator to dictate ” PARTY OVER PEOPLE” government in Wisconsin.
Vos so desperately wants to hold on to power that he is willing to deny the votes of one million plus Wisconsin voters by impeaching a newly elected Supreme Court Justice who has yet to hear a single case. Allowing Protasiewicz to vote on the maps would probably mean that the boundaries will be redrawn, weakening Vos’s disproportionate power that Republicans have wielded in the legislature for the past 13 years.
Vos is seeking to impeach Protasiewicz on the grounds that she seeks to save and return Democracy in Wisconsin. Vos cannot be allowed to deny the election of any official that the PEOPLE have freely and fairly chosen to serve them.
–Hanson, of Elkhorn, is a member of the Walworth County Democratic Party.
