Frederica Freyberg:

At this moment, Wisconsin has no maps showing legislative voting boundaries because the U.S. Supreme Court this week rejected Wisconsin’s new election maps put forth by Democratic Governor Tony Evers. Republicans argued Evers’ maps violate the Voting Rights Act by improperly using race in setting seven majority-Black districts in the Milwaukee area, compared to the former five districts. The nation’s highest court said Wisconsin’s Supreme Court should have looked at whether a race-neutral alternative that did not add a seventh majority-Black district would deny Black voters equal political opportunity. Senior political reporter Zac Schultz joins us to explain the ruling. Hi, Zac.

Zac Schultz:

Hello, Frederica.

Frederica Freyberg:

So by your read, did the ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court come as a surprise here?

Zac Schultz:

I think it did do a lot of observers, simply because the court has been consistent in these redistricting decisions over the past couple years that when it’s this close to an election, they prefer to defer to the state courts in these cases. They’ve done that in North Carolina, in Pennsylvania, and in Alabama on another Voting Rights Act-type decision. So in this case, a lot of people were thinking it’s too close, especially with the candidates about to start circulating nomination papers in the next month, so that was the surprise.

Frederica Freyberg:

So the high court sends it back to Wisconsin justices, telling them basically to figure it out. How inclined are Wisconsin’s justices to get into the business of drawing these maps?

Zac Schultz:

Well, I think they wanted to avoid drawing the maps from the beginning. That’s why they went the route they went, which is choosing from a Republican map or Governor Evers’ maps. In this case, remedying the situation that the U.S. Supreme Court says needs to be fixed including adjusting these boundaries gives them a couple of cases. Governor Evers would say let’s fight and justify the maps that already exist and the map you already chose or they could slightly adjust his map. Republicans, of course, are saying, hey, use our map, it doesn’t violate the Voting Rights Act and it’s close enough to what some of the other measures the Wisconsin Supreme Court wanted in the first place. So they may adjust boundaries or they may pick between one or two.

Frederica Freyberg:

So Justice Hagedorn was the swing vote in Wisconsin that approved the Evers’ maps. Will all eyes be on him this round?

Zac Schultz:

Absolutely. He’s been the swing vote on all of these really important decisions all along. There’s three liberals. There’s three conservatives, and Justice Hagedorn is clearly a conservative in mindset but he has approached things differently and independently in a lot of these cases, and he was the one that set the standard for the least change model that the court decided to adapt in picking the maps and he’s the one who sided with liberals when they decided to pick the Evers’ maps saying that fit in the first place. So he is who everyone is going to be appealing to when it comes to deciding how this get figured out.

Frederica Freyberg:

So Tony Evers is already wanting to submit to the state Supreme Court new evidence in support of his maps and even changes to his maps. What’s happening there?

Zac Schultz:

Well, he’s looking at two different options for how to keep his whole map in place. Either by making minor adjustments in the Milwaukee area and hoping that satisfies the Wisconsin Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court, or he’d like to keep his original map and make a further justification to the U.S. Supreme Court of why his districts actually are legal under the Voting Rights Act. The crux of that argument there is that he says he didn’t get to make the full case in the first place, and the U.S. Supreme Court wanted evidence that it never received in making the decision to say that there was no justification for creating that seventh Black-majority district in Milwaukee.

Frederica Freyberg:

So how much is time of the essence here? Is it critical?

Zac Schultz:

Absolutely, because we’re only a few weeks away from candidates being able to take out nomination papers in these Assembly and state Senate districts around the state, and they need to know the boundaries, because they can only collect signatures from eligible voters within their district. And this gets back to the question of which maps might be chosen. Because if they end up just modifying the Evers’ map or justifying it, then the vast majority of the state’s district lines have already been set. Clerks have been working on those minor boundaries of which ward in which city is in each district so people know where to go. But if the Wisconsin Supreme Court changes course directly and says we’re going to use the Republican map, well, that means every district in the state changes, every clerk in the state has to start redrawing those boundaries, and all those candidates may be circulating papers without knowing where they actually will be running.

Frederica Freyberg:

So what do you think clerks are thinking right about now?

Zac Schultz:

Well, clerks have been dealing with a lot the last two years. They’ve dealt with elections during a pandemic. They’ve had the courts and legislature change things on them at the last minute in all these elections and now they’ve been dealing with all these conspiracy theorists accusing them of fraud. So they’re used to being in the hot seat in Wisconsin elections but this is just one more thing they have to deal with. Ultimately, it’s up to each candidate to circulate nomination papers in the correct district but they’re relying on the clerks to have those districts set. The clerks have been working overtime since the original Evers’ maps were chosen a few weeks ago and they’ll have an even shorter deadline to finalize these once we know the final maps from the court.

Frederica Freyberg:

Meanwhile SCOTUS left in place the Evers Congressional maps making the first district more competitive. Republicans want to challenge that. Does that challenge have legs?

Zac Schultz:

Well, who knows? It’s the Wisconsin Supreme Court. They originally said those maps were fine and the appeal was denied by the U.S. Supreme Court, so you wouldn’t think the Wisconsin Supreme Court would revisit that decision, but once it’s back in their court, they can make any decision they want and justify it really any which way they want.

Frederica Freyberg:

Zac Schultz, thanks very much. Thanks for untangling this for us.

Zac Schultz:

My pleasure.