Thread by @remiker_devin

GOP Assembly Speaker Robin Vos is pressing forward with nullifying Wisconsin’s Supreme Court election through impeachment. But he’s thrown out a giant red herring—a vote on a make-believe redistricting bill. 🧵

His goal is that we spend the next two weeks talking about it, instead of his unprecedented, unconscionable, and unconstitutional impeachment threat.

We’re not going to do that. It is worth, at best, a Twitter thread and not even by the guy who normally does our threads.

There are very serious problems with the bill— most importantly that Vos created a process designed to fail and lock in the current gerrymander perpetually instead of outright giving Republicans the power to unilaterally redraw the maps.

Last night they ensured their process can be obstructed by one party, now and in any future redistricting cycle. How?

Through a bunch of amendments hastily circulated for the first time on the floor.

They are critical for their new scheme to gerrymander forever.

The key to doing that is from this amendment.

No plan may be considered and voted on after January 31 of the 2nd year following the census.

Under a separate but similar provision, if the Legislature fails to agree on new maps by January 2024, they would default to the current gerrymandered maps (or maybe the same partisan process used now.) until 2031-- and potentially perpetually given the 2-year expiration date.

They introduced no Iowa-style component to have SCOWIS act as a failsafe mechanism to prevent this.

At the same time, they also gave themselves a lot of other options to block fair maps in 2024 and potentially forever.

The commission is set up to have an equal number of Dem and GOP members, who must select a chairperson by majority vote.

One party could simply prevent a chairperson from being selected by refusing to agree on anybody.

Under the amended bill, the commission would be unable to take action on anything without all 5 members to be present—including the chairperson.

Not only could they easily gridlock on selecting a chair, but now all members need to be present and voting for the commission to take any action at all.

By not showing up, any one member can stop the process dead in its tracks, locking in the current gerrymander

Another amendment to the bill requiring a bipartisan vote is undefined.

Does it require bipartisan votes in both chambers or just one? Could somebody leave the GOP to join the MAGA Party and satisfy it?

This could also be used to further run out the clock with party-line votes.

This plan also seems to say nothing about Congressional maps.

In fact, it seems to intentionally exclude them entirely from this process by specifying that it is the Senate and Assembly with no mention at all.

These backdoors to maintain control either show arrogant disdain for the people of WI to think they could sneak it by or blatant disregard for good legislation as they used this bill solely as a facade to distract from the blowback on their impeachment scheme.

The will of the people is the law of the land, and Wisconsin voters need to keep the pressure on. We will not be distracted from their attempt to overturn the last election.

Head to right now to call or email your legislators.defendjustice.com