Parties Bicker Over How to Do Iowa-Style Redistricting

Tony Evers and Robin Vos.

Capitol politicians are full of surprises.

For years, Republican legislative leaders dismissed calls to adopt Iowa’s non-partisan process of redrawing Congressional and legislative district lines. Iowa has professionals draw maps that must then be adopted or rejected by legislators and the governor.

Last week, Wisconsin Assembly Republicans not only proposed a process similar to Iowa’s, but the full Assembly passed it two days later. That Assembly vote – by 63 Republicans and one Democrat – sent it to the Senate, whose Republican leaders have not said whether they will accept it.

In 2019, 52 Democratic legislators sponsored a bill that would have brought Iowa’s non-partisan process for drawing new lines to Wisconsin.

And, on Jan. 27, 2020, Democratic Gov. Tony Evers created a Peoples Maps Commission to draw new district boundaries that lawmakers could adopt. In that order, Evers said “nonpartisan redistricting … must rely on nonpartisan experts for guidance.”

But, last week, Evers dismissed Assembly Republicans’ epiphany on how to draw new district lines as “bogus” and a move “to retain legislative control by having someone Legislature-picked and Legislature-approved draw Wisconsin’s maps.”

“Senate Democrats will not play a part in the charade,” added Senate Democratic Leader Melissa Agard.

Why the reversals? An April election gave liberals a four-justice majority on the state Supreme Court, which could throw out maps drawn by Republican legislators after the 2020 census and order new district lines to be drawn in time for November 2024 elections.

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos announced the Assembly Republicans’ reversal. It came days after Vos said Assembly Republicans might impeach the new justice elected in April, Justice Janet Protasiewicz, if she participates in a likely case responding to a lawsuit challenging current legislative district lines. That threat prompted leaders of the Wisconsin Democratic Party, which gave the Protasiewicz campaign almost $10 million, to target Assembly Republicans who would have to vote to impeach Protasiewicz.

If Wisconsin adopts the Iowa model, Vos said, “There will be no need to have the whole discussion about recusal and millions of dollars of attack ads and special interest trying to buy the election and all the things that we know are coming.”

Vos called Democrats’ opposition to the Iowa model “the height of hypocrisy.”

“I’m a little surprised by the hypocrisy,” said Republican Rep. Todd Novak, who has pushed for the Iowa model. “Some people all of a sudden are opposed to exactly what they’ve been advocating for.”

But Assistant Democratic Leader Kalan Haywood said Republicans “see the ultimate outcome ahead and must distract the people of Wisconsin with another political stunt. Now that you are faced with the potential consequences of your actions, you are trying to change the rules.”

Democrats and Jay Heck, executive director of the nonpartisan Common Cause in Wisconsin, saw a poison pill in Vos’s first plan, since it would have allowed a simple majority of the Republican-controlled Legislature to adopt a third set of maps, if the first two fail to pass the Legislature or are vetoed by the governor.

Responding to that concern, the Assembly added a requirement that a bipartisan vote would be required for any plan to become law. On the final Assembly vote, only Democratic Rep. LaKeshia Myers voted for the bill. But two other Milwaukee Democrats – Marisabel Cabrera and Sylvia Ortiz-Velez – helped pass amendments that moderated the plan and then skipped the final vote.

The Assembly-passed plan would require non-partisan professionals working for the Legislative Reference Bureau (LRB) to draw up new legislative district lines that give no advantage to either party and do not favor incumbents by Jan. 31.

Like the Iowa model, a five-member advisory commission would oversee the process – two Democrats and two Republicans who would choose the fifth member.

The first two sets of LRB maps could not be amended by the Legislature. But, if the first two sets do not pass the Legislature or are vetoed by the governor, a third plan could be amended but only if at least one minority-party legislator voted for the final plan.

Democrats argued that any amendments to a third plan should require a three-fourths majority to be accepted, which is what the Democratic bill in 2021 stipulated. Republicans refused that request.

The absence of a provision requiring a three-fourths majority is one reason why the version of the bill in the Senate “doesn’t go far enough,” said Debra Cronmiller of the nonpartisan League of Women Voters of Wisconsin.

“This bill, if enacted, could result in more of the same extremely gerrymandered Legislative maps that we have now,” Cronmiller said in a statement. “This bill needs to require a supermajority (or 3/4 vote) of the Legislature, to ensure one party does not overrule the process.”

The process has worked in Iowa. In 1981, that state’s Legislative Services Agency’s third set of maps became law; in 1991, the first plan was accepted; in 2001, the second plan was accepted and, in 2021, the second plan was signed into law.

But Iowa’s Legislative Services Agency adds this warning to states like Wisconsin considering its process: “The redrawing of congressional and legislative district boundaries following each decennial census is a difficult process, fraught with many critical legal and political considerations.”

Steven Walters started covering the Capitol in 1988. Contact him at stevenscotwalters@gmail.com