Here & Now

Noon Wednesday Preview: Malia Jones

Frederica Freyberg:

Wisconsin is at the center of a case heard in front of the United States Supreme Court in October of last year. The plaintiffs in the case, Gill v. Whitford, contend that Wisconsins legislative maps are a product of partisan gerrymandering and are unconstitutional. In a weekly online segment, Marisa Wojcik spoke with Malia Jones of the UW Applied Population Laboratory about packing and cracking, two methods commonly used to gerrymander districts.

Malia Jones:

We can find evidence and the lower court did find that we see cracking and packing happening in the Wisconsin Assembly Districts. Packing is — so, as I said, packing is this process where a large number of voters are concentrated into a small number of districts. And so it minimizes their representation in the whole Assembly, right? So they do win seats in a few districts, but only a few. So that’s packing. And then cracking — and packing I think it’s a little hard to argue that there was intentional packing in the Wisconsin Assembly District maps because of just the general patterns of segregation that we see in the city. Cracking is — I think the evidence is a little more straightforward. You can look at the Assembly districts that are in the Milwaukee suburbs and see that the districts are drawn in such a way as to divide up democratic votes.

Frederica Freyberg:

To see the full interview, visit Wisconsin Public Television’s Facebook page or find it on our website at wpt.org. A ruling on that case could come Monday.