Retiring Guy's Digest: Cheating to win elections: Wisconsin GOP attempts to defend the indefensible use of cracking and packing in drawing legislative districts (Packing Oshkosh edition)

Located in east-central Wisconsin, the 53rd Assembly District includes portions of Winnebago and Fond du Lac counties.

With a population of 171,730, Winnebago County should have three Assembly districts of its own. And here are no good reasons for GOP to dip into Fond du Lac County not once, but twice, to draw this district.

The useless, I'm-just-taking-up-space-here Michael Schraa has represented the district since January 2013. He ran unopposed in November 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:

UW Oshkosh Today, 3/3/2021

Neumeyer said the idea came to him after listening to an episode of FiveThirtyEight’s podcast series The Gerrymandering Project.

“One of the episodes covered the extreme partisan gerrymandering which took place here in Wisconsin and I started to dig into the process a bit more last summer and realized that Wisconsin was one of the few states trying to implement this nonpartisan, commission-style redistricting,” he said. “When I was asked to teach a community engagement Quest III course, the idea of asking the students to engage with the process of redistricting came to me right away, especially with it being such a timely topic with our districts being redrawn this year.”

Alyssa Roland, a sophomore nursing major from Sauk Prairie, said by the end of the course she’d learned a lot on topics she’d been “oblivious to” at the start.

“I learned that it is nearly impossible to balance the scale in a way that represents both parties equally, however there are ways to satisfy the law and the people without extreme gerrymandering,” she said.

Neumeyer said the feedback from students was very positive. He met with the groups multiple times as they worked on redrawing the maps and listened to their discussions as they justified each decision.

Other posts in the series: