Wisconsin—Democracy’s Anvil
Taking the mantle from Florida and Ohio, it now may be Wisconsin’s turn to be the most highly sought after and pivotal state in the coming presidential election. In 2020, Joe Biden won its ten electors by only 20,000 votes out of more than 3 million cast. While in 2024, Democrats might have a path of victory that bypasses Wisconsin, Republicans will have an extremely difficult time getting to 270 without it.
The narrow margin in 2020 reflected the state’s party breakdown. Wisconsin does not provide official data on party registration, but according to estimates by the Pew Research Center, the parties are virtually even, with Democrats having perhaps a very slight edge.
The equality in party preference is not reflected in the legislature, however. In the state senate, Republicans hold 2/3 of the seats, 22-11, giving them a veto-proof super majority. The state assembly has a similar lack of balance, with Republicans holding a 65-34 seat advantage, a scant two seats short of a super majority there as well. Republicans quite obviously did not attain those bloated margins by drawing election districts fairly.
Although they are in no danger of losing legislative supremacy, Republicans have grown increasingly panicked about losing the 2024 presidential race, and panic breeds desperation. They grew more desperate still on April 4, 2023, when in the race for a vacant seat on the state supreme court, Democrat Janet Protasiewicz, who made abortion and gerrymandering the focus of her campaign, thoroughly thumped conservative Republican Daniel Kelly, winning by 200,000 votes, which translated into a 10% landslide.
Protasiewicz’s victory gave Democrats a 4-3 advantage on the court, an edge they had not enjoyed in almost two decades. With the governorship and the attorney general’s office already in Democrats’ hands, Republicans’ prospects seemed increasingly tenuous and, with a growing number of young voters rejecting what they saw as extreme conservative policies, there seemed to be only one alternative left for Republicans to clear the path for Donald Trump or whichever other candidate might be carrying the Trump torch.
Cheat.
In this, Republicans, having cheated to gain their majorities, were in good position to use those majorities to cheat further.
To pursue that strategy effectively, it seemed necessary for Republicans to ensure that they would not be thwarted by those in charge of overseeing the election, and then that any legal challenges brought against the chicanery they put in play are not successful in court.
Wisconsin Republicans are trying to do both.
On September 14, the Wisconsin state senate, in a strict 22-11 party line result, voted to remove Meagan Wolfe, the administrator of the bipartisan Wisconsin Elections Commission. Wolfe’s position is non-voting, her job simply to implement decisions made by the six commissioners, three from each party.
Republicans claimed their actions were “to restore faith in the electoral system,” a whopper of an irony since they were the ones who tried to undermine that faith by promoting the fiction that Donald Trump actually won the state in 2020. They trotted out the same discredited “massive voter fraud” nonsense employed in other states Republicans lost. They were also furious that Wolfe oversaw moves during the pandemic to make it easier for people to vote without risking their lives, by, for example, mailing absentee ballots to nursing homes.
Wolfe countered by saying, “The Senate’s vote today to remove me is not a referendum on the job I do but rather a reaction to not achieving the political outcome they desire,” which could not have been more on the money. In addition, attorney general Josh Kaul has filed suit, claiming the senate vote was illegal, a charge with which Republicans took predictable umbrage.
With Wolfe’s job only temporarily secure, Republicans are considering the second prong of their attack, an impeachment vote against Janet Protasiewicz, this before she has even heard a case. The grounds will be “comments she made as a candidate about redistricting and for receiving donations from the state Democratic Party.” If there is anything Wisconsin Republicans do not want to hear it is anyone suggesting that electoral districts in the state should be drawn in a manner that accurately reflects its political makeup.
As to donations, although Protasiewicz outspent Kelly by $6 million and did accept contributions from the state Democratic Party, Kelly spent more than $17 million himself, some of which also came from state and county Republican Parties. And Kelly took more than $15 million from special interest groups, dwarfing what Protasiewicz accepted.
State Republicans have one more wrinkle. If the assembly votes to impeach and there is no trial in the senate, Protasiewicz will retain her seat but be unable to participate in any case that comes before the court, including the redistricting lawsuits that are now pending.
What is going on in Wisconsin has far greater import than whether Republicans will retain power through these flagrant attempts to maintain majorities they do not deserve.
As the Alabama state legislature demonstrated in its refusal to abide by a Supreme Court ruling that it add a second Black majority congressional district, bald-faced hypocrisy and sneering at the democratic process have become standard tactics among conservatives, who, of course, do so in the name of freedom, democracy and the rule of law.
If, therefore, the Wisconsin legislature is successful it will only encourage conservative Republicans in other states to become even more arrogant in their campaign to tear down American democracy and replace it with some form of dictatorial rule, be it autocracy, oligarchy, or faux theocracy.
Wisconsin Democrats and many Independents are fighting hard to prevent their state from becoming an anti-democracy proving ground. The outcome of that battle will bear strongly on the future of our form of government.