Today I learned that in Wisconsin, "contiguous" means "nearby" instead of "touching" or some other synonym. An AP story in the Star Tribune reported on what I hope will be successful lawsuits over this bit of obvious gerrymandering.
All of the definitions I see defy the idea of "nearby":
- Sharing an edge or boundary; touching.
- Neighboring; adjacent.
- Connecting without a break.
As the story makes clear, there are practical problems for representatives, or people running against them, with having a district that isn't truly contiguous. It's also confusing for people who live in those isolated parts of a district. And with the use of computers to increase the fine-tuning of gerrymandering, it makes the practice even worse, because it removes one of the few impediments that exists to packing and cracking.
Wisconsin's detached districts are ''profoundly weird," said Justin Levitt, a professor at Loyola Marymount University Law School in Los Angeles who created the All About Redistricting website.
How bad is the Wisconsin gerrymander? In 2018, Democrats running for state assembly seats got 54% of the popular vote, but Republicans still won 63 of the 99 seats. That's only three seats away from a two-thirds supermajority. (source) That's some packing!
In Wisconsin, 55 of the 99 Assembly districts and 21 of the 33 Senate districts have disconnected portions, according to the AP story. The legislator featured in the story has a district with a dozen "land islands" in his district. Guess where he's located: the liberal Madison area.
Getting rid of this ridiculous use of fake contiguity seems to be part of the solution to solving the Wisconsin gerrymander.
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