Hans Breitenmoser, a dairy farmer from northern Wisconsin, has followed politics for as long as he can remember. Since grade school, he has tracked national and international trade and policy, always attuned to the material effects of remote and wonky issues on average people.
The reach of the Lincoln County board, where Breitenmoser currently represents two towns, is typically limited to local issues that affect county residents directly. But recently, this task has pulled him into a statewide issue—gerrymandering.
“If there’s poor management at the state level on any issue, it affects us,” Breitenmoser says. “Road funding or lack thereof, proper zoning or lack thereof—all these things we deal with on the local level because counties are arms of the state.” But this depends on legislative action, and the state’s mechanism for representation, Breitenmoser came to realize, does not function as it should.
In 2011, with majorities in the assembly and senate and Governor Scott Walker in office, Republicans controlled every step of the process for drawing new political boundaries. The electoral maps were drawn in secret by top Republican leaders, guided by a team of lawyers working in a private office blocks from the state capitol in Madison. Even GOP legislators were required to sign non-disclosure agreements before viewing the new maps.
In the last three years, forty-seven of Wisconsin’s seventy-two counties have passed resolutions on gerrymandering.
In the 2012 elections, Republicans won more than 62 percent of Wisconsin’s congressional seats—despite carrying only 49 percent of the popular vote. Afterward, two state senators raised the question of gerrymandering in the state capitol. Dale Schultz, a Republican, and Tim Cullen, a Democrat, drafted a bill to create a nonpartisan commission to draw electoral maps in the state. It would establish a process similar to that used in Iowa, where a nonpartisan commission draws Congressional and state legislative districts, subject to legislative approval.
In a Wisconsin State Journal op-ed, the senators argued that nonpartisan redistricting would protect both parties from maps rigged to their detriment. As it is, they wrote, “Every ten years, the party in power draws the lines in a way that helps get more of its own party members elected.”
To push back against gerrymandering, concerned county supervisors are petitioning the state to pass “advisory resolutions” which encourage fairer means of drawing electoral maps, based on Iowa’s redistricting process. In the last three years, forty-seven of Wisconsin’s seventy-two counties have passed resolutions on gerrymandering.
After passing a resolution in Lincoln County last year, Breitenmoser put together a primer for anyone—constituents and county supervisors alike—interested in introducing a resolution.
To pass a resolution on nonpartisan redistricting in parts of the state that typically lean conservative, writes Breitenmoser, get to know your county board. Know who’s well-liked and have them introduce the resolution. On the day of the vote, he writes, “pack your county board meeting with supporters.”
His advice has struck a chord. The guide has been shared widely on social media and is featured on Wisconsin Citizen Action’s website, providing readers both an introduction to gerrymandering and antidote to it.
Sometimes, Breitenmoser travels across the state to work with people who want to push back against gerrymandering but aren’t familiar with the community organizing that underpins the movement. From those meetings, constituents and board members can take on the role as community organizers.
“A while ago I was asked to go to the Green Bay area,” Breitenmoser says, “and the person who invited us, has been ever since that evening, this tireless advocate.”
Others have joined the push to change the way the Wisconsin government draws electoral maps. In early 2017, groups including Citizen Action, the League of Women Voters, and Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, joined several counties in drafting resolutions that called on state government to adopt a nonpartisan redistricting process.
In mid-2017, Sachin Chheda, director and co-founder of the Fair Elections Project, a Wisconsin-based nonprofit that lobbies for redistricting reform in Washington, D.C., established a new organization. The Fair Maps Coalition pushes for nonpartisan redistricting at the state level, building on Breitenmoser’s county-level work.
“Some of the partisan nonsense that happens at state and federal levels doesn’t have to happen here. We don’t even have Ds or Rs at the end of our name.”
“If you look at the polling and county board resolutions,” Chheda says, “we know we’re being stymied by the legislative leadership who would rather spend millions of dollars on high-priced attorneys using tax dollars to try to rig maps to to gain power.”
A Marquette University poll found that nonpartisan redistricting is backed by more than 70 percent of Wisconsin residents.
And yet, when new Democratic Governor Tony Evers included a proposal in his budget address to create a nonpartisan redistricting commission, the measure was removed by Republicans on the Joint Finance Committee.
In Racine County, where voters elected Trump by a margin of more than 4 percent in 2016, county board members voted unanimously in favor of a nonpartisan process. And yet Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, Racine’s representative in the state legislature, remains opposed to nonpartisan redistricting. (Vos did not reply to multiple requests for comment on his position).
Currently the U.S. Supreme Court is poised to issue a ruling on partisan redistricting in Maryland and North Carolina. It essentially punted on an earlier case from Wisconsin brought by a group of voters, including Madison resident Bill Whitford. A retired University of Wisconsin Law School professor, Whitford has written that in Wisconsin and in many other states, “legislators have chosen their voters,” ensuring their own ability to remain in office.
How will the redistricting reform campaign move forward in Wisconsin? In states like Michigan, Colorado, Utah, and Missouri, voters have passed ballot initiatives to create new processes for mapping their districts. In Wisconsin, a state that does not recognize ballot initiatives, activists hold on to hope that the U.S. Supreme Court will outlaw the most egregious gerrymanders.
But that outcome is less likely since Justice Anthony Kennedy, previously viewed as the critical swing vote on the issue, has been replaced by Donald Trump appointee Brett Kavanaugh.
Just two weeks ago, the court blocked two federal court rulings that were seen as correctives to gerrymandering in Ohio and Michigan.
Organizers maintain that regardless of the Supreme Court’s ruling on Monday, they will continue to push for democracy reform. Nick Demske, supervisor for Racine County—and one of those petitioning the state—points out that a measure like nonpartisan redistricting is bound to receive broad local support anyway.
“Some of the partisan nonsense that happens at state and federal levels doesn’t have to happen here,” he adds. “We don’t even have Ds or Rs at the end of our name. So there’s a little more room to look at what makes sense for our community, rather than what’s to be gained for my party.”
“This isn’t a progressive measure,” he adds. “It’s a very sane and a nonpartisan approach to government.”