Located in south-central Wisconsin, the 44th Assembly District includes most of Janesville's 65,500 residents.
Sue Conley (D-Janesville) has represented the district since January 2021. She defeated her Republican opponents by 20 percentage points in 2020 and 25 percentage points in 2022.
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:
Los Angeles Review of Books, 2/22/2022
FOR MODERN ART masterpieces of the early 21st century, future historians might look to the postindustrial city of Janesville, Wisconsin, as an inspiration. The 44th Legislative District that surrounds the city is an eye-popping triumph of design, strangely beautiful in its ugliness. It appears as an irregular squiggle around the city’s core, poked and perforated by dozens of incursions against its linear integrity — little 100-yard raids here and there by the neighboring districts, pecking away not for birdseed but for the homes of known Republican votes.
Sophisticated map-drawing software has allowed lawmakers to take cynical aesthetics to new levels. While this practice happens in almost every state, Wisconsin is routinely cited as the capital of gerrymandering — “some of the most extreme partisan gerrymanders in the United States,” according to Princeton University political scientists. On November 8, 2022, voters re-elected Governor Tony Evers, a Democrat, by a convincing margin. Those same voters also kept Republicans in control of both the state assembly and its senate.
Other posts in the series:
See also: Spotlight on Wisconsin gerrymandering
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