Last Thursday marked the end of this year’s scheduled legislative session in the Wisconsin Assembly. Unsurprisingly, the Republican majority took it as their last opportunity to send several highly controversial bills through the Legislature — most of which are aimed at securing their control of all three branches of government. 

Recall Elections: Republicans passed a bill that would restrict recalls to cases in which the elected official was charged with a felony or ethics violation.

The power to recall should not be limited. State officials need to be held accountable to the people who elected them. Under this constitutional amendment, former Sheboygan Mayor Bob Ryan (from an area near my home) could not have been recalled by voters, simply because being drunk in public and making sexist comments about your sister-in-law is not a felony.

Changes to Wisconsin Supreme Court: Under current law, the chief justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court is the longest serving member of the court. At the moment, that position belongs to Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson. The new legislation would call for the justices to pick the chief justice among themselves.

Right now the court has a distinct conservative majority that Abrahamson is not a part of. The Supreme Court is meant to be a neutral body that decides on matters of the law. The Wisconsin Supreme Court’s neutrality is already threatened because our justices go through the process of elections. Having the most senior member of the court serve as the chief justice is an excellent, neutral method of appropriating leadership power and rewarding a justice’s length of public service.

Restrictions on Voting Times: Republicans also passed a bill that would limit municipal clerks’ hours to weekdays. Not only would this bill limit voting to weekdays, but it would also imply that the clerk’s office could not be open for more than 40 hours a week and could only receive ballots between 7:30 a.m. and 5 p.m.

This bill inhibits the ability of people to vote early in elections, specifically in the larger cities of Milwaukee and Madison.

In more recent elections, there have been major democratic efforts to get people to vote in-person absentee the weekend before an election. These voting pushes are most common in areas with a high population density because not everybody wants to wait in line on election day. Early voting makes voting easier for people who work during the week and thins election day lines.

What is inconvenient for Republicans is that the urban centers, where much weekend voting takes place, are historically democratic strongholds. By restricting the times that people are able to vote, Republicans hope to discourage people who would be unable to vote during the week from casting a ballot. This is an attempt to get an edge in state wide elections.

A Simplistic Solution: It is a miscarriage of democracy for any of the above bills to be passed by the party that already holds an unfair advantage in our state. This unfair advantage comes from the redistricting hack job carried out by Republicans in 2010.

In the 2012 elections, 53.1 percent of the votes cast for the Wisconsin Assembly were for Democrats and 46.9 percent were for Republicans. Yet from this democratic majority, Democrats received a mere 39 seats in the assembly while Republicans received 60. The Wisconsin Legislature simply does not reflect what the people of Wisconsin voted for.

The current legislative districts have been carefully drawn to create as many safe Republican seats and as few safe Democratic seats as possible. The power to create legislative districts should be taken out of the Legislature’s hands, as it gives too much power to any single party. The majority will always try to create districts that favor its party for the next 10 years.

A model example of how districts should be drawn can be found in the state of Iowa. In Iowa, legislative districts are drawn by a non-partisan advisory committee. While the legislative map the advisory committee comes up with must be approved by the Legislature, the results have proven to be more equitable, as Iowa is one of only four states where different political parties control the state Senate and the House of Representatives.

The power to draw legislative districts must be taken out of the hands of legislators in order to ensure fair elections. When a single party can carve out a majority by doing electoral calculations, our impact as voters is eliminated from the government process. I want my vote to count and I want redistricting reform.

Jared Mehre ([email protected]) is a junior majoring in political science, sociology and legal studies.