Thread by @CSWisconsin

Here's our analysis of Governor Evers' secretly-crafted redistricting maps, which (after ignoring his own commission's work) he submitted to the Wisconsin Supreme Court last week. Warning, this 🧵 will be at least a dozen tweets long.

Our Executive Director @joeminocqua has completed this initial review of the map Governor Evers has submitted to the court. In many ways it is worse than the disaster that was the map that came out of his “non-partisan” commission (and inferior to the legislative plan).

We demonstrate that the Evers map is not really a least change map as required by the court. Yet it still would likely create strong GOP majorities in the Legislature, blowing apart 10 years of Democratic excuses of “gerrymandering."

But if we pretend the Evers map is a least change map, then we need to compare it to other least change maps on the traditional legal criteria. When we do, there is no reason the court should choose it over the Legislative plan.

From @joeminocqua “My initial reaction was that it looked like it was done by a 2nd grader scribbling outside the lines. But upon review, it is evident that the Evers ‘slice and dice’ approach is intentional. Carving up more than 100 municipalities in effort to help Democrats”

A quick look at MKE CTY exposes this fact. Evers increases the number of split municipalities. By contrast, the Common Sense least change map is able to reduce the number of splits (which could be quite appealing to Justice Hagedorn based on his recent concurring opinion).

A simple visual inspection makes clear that the Evers map is not a “least change” map as required by the court. A true least change map looks more like the Common Sense or Legislative map.

Evers purposefully splits 2 additional cities in MKE Cty to remove Republicans and add Democrats to AD21. By contrast, the Common Sense map shows how to enact least changes while actually reducing municipal splits.

Here is a comparison on the criteria that will be important to the court. There is no reason for the court to choose Evers map over other least change maps that are better on the objective legal criteria.

Also included are political number (Walker and Trump) for each plan.

Let us review the criteria one at a time:

Population deviation – The Evers map has a total deviation more than double that of the Legislative plan and nearly double that in the Common Sense map.

Splits – Just when we thought no-one could do worse than the Peoples Maps Commission, along comes the new Evers “hold my beer” map. Evers splits 107 municipalities compared to only 48 in the Legislative plan and 36 in the Common Sense map.

VRA – The Common Sense and Legislative maps clearly do a better job of replicating the Voting Rights Act districts approved and drawn by the Court in 2012. The CS map is not before the court, however. This leaves the Legislative plan as the clear choice.

Compactness – The Evers plan is slightly more compact than the Legislative plan and slightly less compact than the Common Sense plan.

Additional examples of slicing and dicing in the super-secret Evers map:

The key takeaways from his hypocrisy:
Evers' super-secret submission is not a least change map.
Even if it were, it is inferior to the Legislative plan on the other redistricting criteria.
The Evers plan threatens 30 yrs of progress on minority representation in the Legislature.