Evers Should Approve His Own Maps

Democrats should accept ‘yes’ for an answer.

In a development that would have been considered impossible a year ago — and would have been thought unlikely even a few weeks ago — legislative Republicans are now talking about approving Gov. Tony Evers’ legislative district maps just as he submitted them to the state Supreme Court.

A fair question to ask is, what do they have up their sleeve? Trust but verify. Unless something else comes to light, it looks like this move tells us a couple of things. The first is that it turned out to be smart for the Democrats’ side to submit multiple maps. While they’re all in the same ballpark, Evers’ maps are slightly better for Republicans. His maps project a narrow Republican advantage in the Senate while the Democratic Senators’ maps, not surprisingly, give them a small edge. Hence, the Republicans’ desire to pick the map that is at least marginally best for them.

The other important thing this tells us is that Republicans don’t think they have much of a chance to get this reversed at the U.S. Supreme Court. They’ve promised to appeal the state Supreme Court-adopted maps to SCOTUS, but if they pass Evers’ maps and he signs the bill, the case goes away entirely.

And that’s a good reason for Evers to agree to take the victory. For one thing, you never really know what any court is going to do. And for another, you never know what the next Wisconsin Supreme Court is going to do. There’s another seat up for grabs a year from April and if the conservative candidate wins and they take back the court majority you can bet Republicans will be back calling for any court-adopted maps to be tossed. But if the maps are not court-imposed, but adopted by the legislature and governor, it makes it very hard for any court to overturn them so long as they meet basic legal standards for things like roughly equal district populations and the like. The principle is that it’s the legislative and executive branches which are responsible for drawing districts and the courts should only intervene under extraordinary circumstances. If Evers signs his own maps that won’t be extraordinary.

My point is that by signing his own maps into law he probably keeps them in place until the next redistricting. If he lets the court do it, we could find them reversed in the next few years.

If Evers wanted to drive a hard bargain he’d also insist that the nonpartisan redistricting commission should also be attached to the maps. That way we’d have some assurance of a fair process for the future. The Republicans might actually go along with that because under the new maps they very well might find themselves in the minority the next time this comes around.

But let’s just stop and drink this in for a minute. Within weeks we will have maps that, while they still give Republicans a small built-in advantage due to Democratic clustering in cities, provide for real partisan competition for control of the Legislature. That should be a moderating influence on our politics.