 Welcome to this week's show, Legislative Update. I'm Jim Baumgart, along with me is the net bully bush co-host of the show. And we have what we think is an important election, democratic process that we want to make sure that people understand that there are people fighting to make sure that elections are fair and correct. And we have problems in Wisconsin that are going to the Supreme Court of the United States. And we want to find out a little bit more about that and how we can correct some of those issues. And to talk to us, we have an expert, Mary Lynn Donnie of Sheboygan, who is involved in the Supreme Court case. I am. Yeah, anyway. Well, first of all, welcome back because we know that you had your show here at WSCS a few years ago for five years. The Donnie Hugh Grove. Five years. Wonderful name, by the way. So when you had guests just like us talking politics and other things, so that's so great. That's great, so welcome back. Thank you. And this is huge. The fact that our Wisconsin case went to the Supreme Court, they heard it, they're going to make a decision that will affect our state and the rest of the nation as well. Yes, absolutely. So tell us about it. Yeah, the case is Whitford versus Gill and has really been, I think it is one of the major cases of the Supreme Court term this year, which starts in October and ends at the end of June. 12 plaintiffs. And you were one of them? I am one of the plaintiffs. I'm not one of the lawyers. People keep thanking me for the work I work. And then I'm saying, no, no, no, no. You don't get paid for the treatment. All I did was sign a representation agreement. But it's been because I'm a retired lawyer following the, there are three plaintiffs, three of the 12 of us are lawyers, including Bill Whitford, who is a law school professor for many, many years. The issues, the legal reasoning, the theories, how things play out are just, I'm kind of a geek. I mean, this is my idea of a good time. Pretty narrow section of the populace there. And our theory basically is that the 2011 redistricting plan that the Republicans enacted in secret. In Wisconsin. In Wisconsin. In 2011. In 2011, behind closed doors. And the law firm, which did it, charged the taxpayers $400,000 to do this. That the plan that came out was profoundly unfair and undemocratic. Now, just to set the stage, after each census, disennial census, the, every legislature. Which is every 10 years. Every 10 years. Is required to redraw its voting districts to make sure that the population is quite even, that the districts are contiguous. You know, they fit together properly. And there are a variety of criteria that the legislature typically follows. So in 2010, we had the census, 2011, we had a fully Republican governor, government, the governor, the legislature, both houses, and arguably the Wisconsin Supreme Court having taken a very conservative bent at that point. So the assembly enacted this plan. They cracked and packed voting districts. I'm in the 26th assembly district. They cracked our district in half by moving half of it up to the 27th. And then the other half, the southern part of the city, is now also in the southern part of the county, which is traditionally very, very conservative. The way the plan was drawn so brilliantly, and you can do it now with the demographic data that's available, it really is the case that neither the 26th or the 27th will ever elect a Democrat. You know, unless there's some one off kind of weird event, those, both of those districts now will be Republican. And that's why in 2012. Even though we might have a whole lot of Democrats here, our voice doesn't count because why again? We're like too crowded in the city or something. Right, well, Nenette, I think you just, you hit the nail on the head, is that in the 26th assembly, which was predictably Democratic, although it did have Republicans, so, you know, it wasn't always a Democratic district. The way the lines are drawn now, because we were, excuse me, because we were cracked, the voters in the Democratic voters in the 26th will always be fewer than the Republican voters. And it's just the way the districts are drawn. And because each district has an assembly person, and you put three districts together and then you have your Senate districts. So what happened in 2012 is the Democrats got 250,000 more votes statewide in the Senate race and the presidential race and so forth. And should have gained more representation. And they lost. They lost seats. Big time. And now the assembly is 99 seats, I believe 66 are, 64 or 66, I should know that and I don't, our Republican and 33 or 34 are Democratic. And the hard part about this redistricting is that it's a permanent majority because the party who's in power has fixed it so that party is always going to be in power. That's just. And so that's why our argument- Which doesn't sound Democratic. That it's unconstitutional. That we don't have, you know, the freedom of expression that's guaranteed in the First Amendment. Do you have the right to speak out? Well, I don't. I mean, I can give money to a candidate and I do, but I could throw the money out the window for all the good it does. A quarter million more people voted for Democrats and yet we lost seats. That's this pretty, that's really kind of incredible. Almost evil. I'm not going to go that far. But I don't think this people realize that. Or Republicans, it's not a fair system and that sounds evil. And to be perfectly clear, Democrats do this just as much as Republicans. Well, maybe not just as much. Maybe not this extreme case. Well, what happened in 2011 is I think it was the manifestation of the really sophisticated demographic data where you can pinpoint to city blocks who is likely to vote in what direction and so forth. Because by law, they have to have an equal population number, correct. But they're sort of adjusting maneuvering things to say, oh, let's put all these say Hispanics who tend to vote a certain way in one district. So their vote is less powerful together. Right, it's a dilution. Yeah, it's just. And sometimes you can pack voters into one district. That happened in Eau Claire, for example. Sorry. The city of Eau Claire now votes 80% Democratic. And it didn't used to do that. Because there were other parts of districts that took the city. And so it was a clever plan. Right now, the Supreme Court has also accepted a case from Maryland where the Democrats did the gerrymandering. And they come to the court with a slightly different theory. But our hope is that the Supreme Court will take these two cases together and say, stop. There are better ways of doing this. We know it's a political process. But you can't make it so unfair that one party is totally obliterated forever. So at that point in June when they made the decision, Wisconsin and all other states would have to look at how they draw their boundaries every 10 years. I think so. And what happens if we lose? I'm going to be really sad. I mean, it's like, wow. Our lawyer, brilliant lawyer, Paul Smith, from the Campaign Legal Center. It was his 20th Supreme Court argument. And boy, is that an art. I was lucky enough to sit in the courtroom and watch. Because you start your argument that both lawyers come up with their three-ring binders. And you get about 30 seconds into your speech. You're well-prepared, thoroughly thought out, speech, and bang, the questions start coming from the judges, from the justices. And Kennedy was just right out of the block going after the state guy. And so you sit there and you're kind of silently cheering for your side. But our lawyer, Paul Smith, said. So Kennedy can see right away that there was something that looked really unfair. Yeah. And we think Kennedy has, Justice Kennedy has positioned himself as a swing vote, quite brilliantly, really, on all sorts of cases. And we even think that Roberts, who's a legacy judge, I think he doesn't want this court as his legacy to be viewed as a highly partisan. And he's come out with some interesting rulings. So it's, if you're into Supreme Court politics, I subscribe to something called the SCOTUS blog, Supreme Court of the United States blog, which has wonderful, as you pointed out, there are no cameras in the courtroom. They have an artist who does quick sketches, and he's good. He's just very, very good at it. So and I'm going far afield here. But what Paul Smith said is that if you don't address this now, there will be a wave of gerrymandering in 2020 that you cannot believe. And so it would even be worse. It could be worse. Yeah. And one of the issues is then people will try to overcome that by spending more and more money in the election to become so economically out of reach for the average voter. Exactly. I mean, my little cheque sites end of $25 or $50 is nothing compared to the half a million to a million, million and a half that these special groups are putting in. It's because they want to influence the election. And if they are so imbalanced, they just add more money. Yeah. So where can people go for more information on this? And what can they do? What can the average person who's as well? Vote. OK. That's the first questions first. Yeah. And voting is very important. Out of 68,000 eligible voters in Sheboygan County, 22,000 are not registered. That's unbelievable. Yeah. That's a separate topic. Right. It sure is. We talked about that with Mrs. Nelson. I think that the Fair Elections Project is there are 35 county boards that have signed a petition for fair elections. There's talk about a constitutional amendment. So I think people who are really concerned about this are pushing hard for a political as well as a legal solution. And ultimately, to have the people speak is the very best thing. And instead of relying on nine Supreme Court justices that have various opinions and so forth. So it's not hopeless, but it would feel pretty hopeless to me. I'd be pretty sad. But actually, Chief Justice Roberts doesn't care whether I'm sad or not. So we'll see. The case was, both at the district court and the Supreme Court, I think was well argued on both sides. I think our folks were better, more sophisticated. And but both sides, these are not amateurs. Let's put it that way. Well, we do want to thank Marilyn and Donnie for updating us. And the Supreme Court will be making their decision in 2018. Before June. And we'll find out if we are in good things or in bad things. I do want to thank everyone for viewers coming. Make sure that you vote in the spring and fall elections, because voting is important, even Germaning, making sure that we get out of this horrendous system that we put ourselves in. So until next week, this has been Legislative Update.