A drastic realignment of the 43rd District's boundaries placed former representative Don Vruwink (D-Milton) in a Republican-leaning district, where he lost in 2022 by 247 votes. Jenna Jacobson (D-Oregon) has represented the district since January 2023. She defeated her Republican opponent by nearly 25 percentage points.
Headline: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 8/11/2023
Map: Wisconsin State Legislature (boxes added)
Somehow, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter Tyler Katzenberger can write an article about legislative district without mentioning 'gerrymandering', 'packing', and 'cracking'.
It's called journalistic malpractice.
The UW Applied Population Lab defines 'cracking' as
drawing districts in such a way as to divide a concentration of specific types of voters across several districts such that they are a minority in each one, with practically no hope of achieving representation in any of the districts. This practice also helps make districts less competitive.
Th UW Applied Population Lab defines 'packing' as
the practice of drawing particular districts in such a way as to ensure that another party's candidate wins that seat by a tremendous margin. Although the opposing party is all but guaranteed the seat, packing makes surrounding districts less competitive, and thus tips the balance of power in the legislative body overall toward the ruling party.
Meet the leaders of the packing and cracking brigade!
Bad optics: Wisconsin Senate, Wisconsin Assem/bly
Wouldn't you rather have this diverse group in the majority?
Related reading:
PBS News, 12/7/2022
In the latest round of redistricting, in which rulings from the conservative state and U.S. supreme courts allowed Republican legislative maps to prevail over objections from Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, Wisconsin’s Assembly skew only got worse.
That’s according to the “efficiency gap,” one of the measurements political scientists have developed to illustrate partisan gerrymandering. The efficiency gap measures how many votes are “wasted” — having no chance to affect the outcome — when one party’s voters are either packed into lopsided districts (Think of Dane County where almost 80% voted for Evers), while others are broken up, or cracked, into districts where the margins are closer, but the party drawing the maps is almost guaranteed to win.
Other posts in the series:
See also: Spotlight on Wisconsin gerrymandering
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