Common Sense Redistricting

Democrats are demanding a new map be drawn from scratch ? they argue the 2012 legislative map is too partisan. Republicans prefer to follow past practice and begin with the current map (as the courts have done). As a non-partisan body, that puts the Governor’s Peoples Maps Commission in a bit of pickle.

If they can?t start from scratch and they do not wish to start with the existing map, where exactly do they begin?

The answer is obvious: The 2002 map was entirely drawn and enacted into law by a non-partisan panel of federal judges. In that trial, the federal court chose to adapt neither the Republican or Democratic map. Furthermore, the court in 2002 spent a great deal of time and focus on properly drawing Milwaukee districts subject to the Voting Rights Act of the United States and then revis-ited and redrew those districts again in 2012.

Common Sense Wisconsin has taken this 2002 map and leveled out population due to the changes reported in the US Census.

The result is a plan that is stunningly similar to the non-partisan plan put into place by the court in 2002 and a plan that scores exceptionally high on the objective, non-partisan criteria laid out by the Peoples Commission.

The Common Sense plan dramatically reduces the number of split municipalities and counties, improves compactness, reduces the splintering of Milwaukee County, promotes communities of interest, and adheres to the Voting Rights Act. Remarkably, it does all this while also achieving low population deviation.