Wisconsin’s powerful Republican Assembly leader said Tuesday that he hopes the liberal-controlled state Supreme Court adopts new constitutional legislative boundary maps, even as he slammed proposals from Democrats as “a political gerrymander” and threatened an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The court tossed Republican-drawn maps, long considered among the country’s most favorable to the GOP, and ordered new maps that do not favor one party over another. It said if the Legislature doesn’t adopt maps, the court will.
Assembly Speaker Robin Vos said Republicans have approached Democrats about passing new maps in the Legislature, but “we have not gotten a warm reception to that idea.”
I think the problem is specifically identifying what counts as gerrymandering. Sure you’ve got super obvious cases where the districts straight up look like a hydra, but with some math and now a little bit of help from AI, it’s perfectly possible to partition districs that look perfectly geometric on the surface but are actually really skewed.
Personally I feel like if there were a single standard drawing process by which all maps were legally mandated to be drawn with, things would be better
You can have an independent commission drawing the maps, and people have even developed algorithms that can do it in software so there’s no human involved.
Computer programs exist that can draw legitimate districts. Lawsuits can challenge districts, and if found to be based on race or political affiliation they can be removed. Bad faith actors will forever be a problem though.