The column below reflects the views of the author, and these opinions are neither endorsed nor supported by WisOpinion.com.
Here’s hoping that the renewed effort by the Elias Law Group, Bothfeld II, to replace the current WI Congressional map is successful in time for the 2026 elections. But even if the “least-change” facsimile of the rigged 2011 map is not replaced by 2030, WI would benefit from having a good model for a future congressional redistricting map to go along with the current assembly and senate maps.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court provided a template for doing redistricting reasonably and efficiently. In the Clarke v WEC case the court gave clear instructions on the criteria that redistricting maps needed to satisfy. Many of these criteria are legally binding: some sort of population equality, contiguity, Voting Rights Act compliance. Other traditional criteria: compactness, minimal splitting of counties and municipalities, preserving communities of interest are to be considered but were not prioritized by the court. In the Clarke opinion, a new and important criterion, political neutrality, seemed to be given elevated status above the traditional ones. The maps were to be free of partisan bias, that is, not “designed to advantage one party over another.”
Politically neutral maps, sometimes referred to as “fair” maps, don’t necessarily provide equal representation to the Democratic and Republican parties. They simply try to abide by simple intuitive principles. For example, if a party gets over 50% of the statewide vote, it should at least have a good chance of getting 50% of the seats. This principle goes by the name of majoritarian concordance. It was one of the three metrics cited by court experts, Grofman and Cervas, in the Clarke case. Another similar principle is if vote share is split evenly, so should seat share. The extent to which a map does this is given by the metric known as seats bias. Generalizing this second principle is the idea of proportionality, that a party’s seat share should reflect its overall vote share. However, we cannot expect this principle to hold stringently as a predicted vote share of 55% in a district practically guarantees winning a seat in Wisconsin.
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Currently, there are about 20 different ways political scientists and geographers have proposed to measure political neutrality. Obviously, if there were one true way to measure political bias, there would not be so many metrics. But what if one map scored better than another map in every single metric? Would the citizens of the state be pleased if the inferior map were selected by the legislature and signed off by the governor? My sense of fairness tells me the answer is no.
One might ask, “Does making a map more politically fair involve some sort of tradeoff that makes the map inferior with respect to other traditional criteria? Again, the answer is no. The table below compares the current Congressional map with one by author Merkalto published on Dave’s Redistricting App (DRA). DRA is a free, public-accessible app that not only lets the public draw redistricting maps, but more importantly produces excellent analytics as well as providing a portal for publication. The numbers in yellow measure compactness, the higher the better. Those in orange measure splits, the lower the better. The ones in green measure political neutrality, the closer to zero the better.
Not surprisingly, Merkalto’s Take 18 even looks better, being more compact. The districts are colored by party lean as determined by a collection of elections from 2016 – 2022. Note how evenly the Democratic and Republican leaning districts are balanced in Take 18, more indicative of our purple state.
If you can construct a WI Congressional map that bests Take 18 in all metrics in the table, perhaps when Bothfeld II disqualifies the current map, yours will be the chosen one. Here is my challenge. Geography teachers take note – this is an excellent opportunity for your students to learn.
Challenge: Construct and publish on DRA a WI Congressional map with +/- 1 population deviation (just like the 2022 map), which has a minority population district of at least 50%, is contiguous, has: higher compactness scores, fewer ward splits, fewer county & municipality splits than Take 18, AND has all 5 partisan fairness metrics cited in the table closer to 0. Use DRA composite election data from 2016 – 2022. Select Map Setting: Wisconsin Wards with Dec 2023 LTSB Corrections. Good luck.
