The 80th Assembly District includes an indefensible hodgepodge of Dane and Iowa counties carved out by a Wisconsin GOP that knows it has to cheat to win. Why do Republicans do this shit? In 2020, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden received 75% of the vote in Dane County. In 2022, Democratic Governor Tony Evers received 79% of the vote. These kind of lopsided outcomes fries the GOP.
So they draw these kinds of crazy lines.
GOP cracking of Middleton (green box; see map below), Fitchburg (gray box), and Iowa County (red box) and packing of Oregon (orange box) and Mount Horeb (purple box). Gerrymandering GOP working overtime!
Mike Bare (D-Verona) has represented the 80th District since January 2023. He defeated his Democratic opponent by 39 percentage points. In other words, there's nothing to gerrymander here, so why bother? Let Dane County be Dane County.
Headline: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 8/11/2023
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.
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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? They support fair maps.
Related reading:
Isthmus, 12/3/2022
A large majority of the county’s 302,575 votes cast went for Gov. Tony Evers — 78.6 percent, compared to only 20.7 percent for Evers’ Republican challenger Tim Michels. Evers also got 4,759 more Dane County votes than Lt. Gov Mandela Barnes, who was trying to unseat Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson. That, plus low turnout in the city of Milwaukee, helped Johnson eke out his 1 percentage point margin of victory statewide. One big takeaway from Dane County’s show of strength is that Republicans can’t win if they don’t try to compete here.
Other posts in the series:
See also: Wisconsin Gerrymandering Spotlight, round 2
See also: Spotlight on Wisconsin gerrymandering
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