Wisconsin in Waiting Mode for Democracy Protection and Restoration

Madison, Wisconsin—Citizens here are waiting for a ruling from the United States Supreme Court to find out if democracy will survive in Wisconsin.

Republicans have transformed election law to obstruct voters, empowered white poll workers to suppress voters, gerrymandered state and congressional districts to elect as many Republicans as possible, infused dark money, among other anti-democracy efforts.

The objective is to enact Republican public policy in opposition to the public will.

One example is the legislative and administrative law attack on clean and safe water creating a crisis that has sent children to the Emergency Room, imperiled the health of communities and polluted rivers, streams, lakes and aquifers

Gov. Scott Walker threw in a new voter obstruction technique this year: Refusing to hold elections to fill vacant legislative seats.

In state senate district one in northeastern Wisconsin, State Sen. Frank Lasee, (R-De Pere), resigned in Dec, 2017. Gov. Scott Walker has publicly refused to call a special election that most observers believe the GOP would lose though the district is gerrymandered Republican.

The Democratic Party of Wisconsin to this point has not launched a public case calling for a special election. One Door County resident in senate district one told me, "nobody is doing anything, the Democrats?" He laughed.

Can you imagine if the roles were reversed? Republican outrage would blanket news coverage across the state.

Progressive writers are making the legal and political case for special elections, and it's writers filling the void where one would reasonably expect the Democratic Party to be.

Meanwhile, voters wait for the Supreme Court to rule on the Gill v. Whitford gerrymandering case from Wisconsin, in light of positive legal developments for voters and democracy against North Carolina Republicans.

From the Raleigh News Observer:

Rick Hasen, a professor at California-Irvine, is often said to be the nation’s leading election law expert. Hasen wrote that the decision could hardly be seen as a surprise, given what our legislature did. 'If there is any case that could be invalidated as a partisan gerrymander, it is this one,' he indicated. It is 'the most brazen and egregious' political electoral distortion yet seen in the United States. North Carolina leaders 'admitted the practice, but argued it should be seen as perfectly legal.'

The Supreme Court stayed the federal court ruling pending appeal. And it is unlikely the review will be squeezed into the current term, given the late scheduling adjustments that would be demanded. The court presently has two political gerrymandering cases on the docket. But Hasen thinks the impact of the North Carolina decision will be felt immediately. The court now knows 'what the future of gerrymandering will look like if it is doesn’t act in the Wisconsin or Maryland cases,' Hasen wrote.

The future would look even better with an energetic, activist and effective Democratic Party of Wisconsin safeguarding democracy.

Now, we look mostly to the courts for that kind of thing.

Supreme Court's Aversion to Social Science Is Perverse

Gill v Whitford Gerrymandering—An Easy Case That Would Destroy Republican Rule

Updated: Housing-discrimination litigation in federal court since the 1960s has often relied upon social scientific evidence — the Taueber dissimilarity and progeny measures — to demonstrate residential and urban segregation, a phenomena akin to American apartheid.

Milwaukee, site of the 2020 Democratic National Convention, remains the most segregated metropolitan urban area in the country, the perennial champ, (WISN News). It's apropos the DNC holds its fete in Milwaukee, as Wisconsin is the state on which the Court punted a decision to protect liberties.

Mayor Tom Barrett (D) is a de facto supporter of segregation and racial discrimination including routine violence, especially when committed by the Milwaukee police, who work with the assurance Barrett has their back. At his best, Barrett is inadequate.

Barrett and much of the United States Supreme Court share a disdain towards empirical science as a tool of demonstrating and remedying unyielding features of American society — racism, segregation and police violence.

While the Democratic Party is picking likely the next president in Summer 2020, the Supreme Court will have decided in the Summer 2019 if the constitutional rights of citizens to vote are expansive, and whether social science can be again sanctioned as a means to demonstrate the latest iteration (redistricting) of the American project of denying rights for the purposes of maintaining power over individual liberty.

How the Democratic Party fares in this affair is an open question, about to get more explosive in the next 14 months than at any point in modern American history, as progress on civil rights could be set back 55 years.


Rucho v. Common Cause, Lamone v. Benisek will determine the fate of American democracy.

Milwaukee 2020 will offer a major reaction to these landmark cases determining for one thing the direction of Democratic administrations of major urban areas, and the role of the president against what could be a Supreme Court ripping up rights by rights at the direction of white fascistic Party.
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Earlier this month [October 2017] at oral argument of the likely precedent-setting Wisconsin gerrymandering case, Republican justices displayed an obtuse mind-set revealing an incapacity to consider social scientific findings in determining whether a statute is unconstitutional, (Gill v. Whitford, Cornell, - Gill v. Whitford, MortizLaw, - Gill v. Whitford, U.S. Supreme Court).

Writes Oliver Roeder this morning at Five-thirty-eight.com:

The Supreme Court does not compute. Or at least some of its members would rather not. The justices, the most powerful jurists in the land, seem to have a reluctance — even an allergy — to taking math and statistics seriously.

For decades, the court has struggled with quantitative evidence of all kinds in a wide variety of cases. Sometimes justices ignore this evidence. Sometimes they misinterpret it. And sometimes they cast it aside in order to hold on to more traditional legal arguments. (And, yes, sometimes they also listen to the numbers.) Yet the world itself is becoming more computationally driven, and some of those computations will need to be adjudicated before long. Some major artificial intelligence case will likely come across the court’s desk in the next decade, for example. By voicing an unwillingness to engage with data-driven empiricism, justices — and thus the court — are at risk of making decisions without fully grappling with the evidence.

This problem was on full display earlier this month, when the Supreme Court heard arguments in Gill v. Whitford, a case that will determine the future of partisan gerrymandering — and the contours of American democracy along with it. As my colleague Galen Druke has reported, the case hinges on math: Is there a way to measure a map’s partisan bias and to create a standard for when a gerrymandered map infringes on voters’ rights?

It's not that rightwing justices like Thomas, Gorsuch, Roberts and Alito cannot comprehend empirical investigation. It is that they do not care to when they are presented findings that point to a remedy helping disfavored segments of the population against whom these legal politicians have been appointed to work.

Without a United States Supreme Court ruling protecting Americans from the Republican Party's gerrymandering drawn after computer simulation after simulation to effectively take citizens out of the loop in democratic elections, Republican rule over citizens is all-but-guaranteed in the future.

In response to the early October oral argument of Gill v. Whitofrd, Nicholas Stephanopoulos, professor at the University of Chicago Law School specializing in election law, penned a column in Slate Magazine spelling out the criteria identifying an unconstitutional gerrymanders. (See also Stephanopoulos Explains the Research that Convinced SCOTUS to take the Wisconsin Gerrymandering Case.]

Writes Stephanopoulos:

As one of the attorneys for the plaintiffs, I was able to attend Tuesday’s oral argument in Gill v. Whitford. At the argument, the justices probed, among other things, how the plaintiffs’ test for partisan gerrymandering would work, how reliable the social science is that underpins this test, and what the test’s implications would be for judicial involvement. Since the plaintiffs’ theory relies in part on my academic work, I’m in a good position to address these issues.

With respect to the test’s operation, Justice Gorsuch warned that a gerrymandering standard should not be like a 'steak rub.' That is, it should not be imprecise and opaque in its makeup: 'I like some turmeric, I like a few other little ingredients, but I’m not going to tell you how much of each.' In reality, the plaintiffs’ proposed test for adjudicating gerrymandering claims is more akin to a detailed recipe than a mystery stew. The test has four elements, and litigants would be required to go through them one by one, proceeding to the next phase only if they satisfied the previous criterion. These four elements are:

1. Was the district plan enacted with the discriminatory intent of benefiting one party and handicapping another one? Maps drawn by a single party in full control of the state government often (but not always) have this motive.
   
   
2. Has the plan exhibited (or is the plan forecast to exhibit) a historically large partisan asymmetry? A partisan asymmetry means a map does not treat the parties equally in terms of how their votes translate into seats. A map’s asymmetry can easily be calculated and then compared to historical data to determine if it’s unusually big.
   
   
3. Is the plan’s partisan asymmetry durable? To find out, a range of plausible election results should be considered. A map’s asymmetry should be deemed persistent enough only if it would endure across this range of outcomes.
   
   
4. Is the plan’s partisan asymmetry unjustified? At this final step, the gold standard is to use a computer algorithm to simulate many maps that satisfy the state’s legitimate redistricting criteria. The challenged plan’s asymmetry is unjustified only if it exceeds that of most of the simulated maps.

Under this approach, there would be some easy cases, like the Wisconsin State Assembly plan at issue in Whitford. This plan’s authors admitted its pro-Republican intent. Its partisan asymmetry is worse than that of any map nationwide between 1972 and 2010. Its asymmetry would persist even if there was a massive Democratic wave. And its asymmetry is larger than that of any simulated assembly map. Conversely, it’s clear a plan would be upheld if it was designed through a bipartisan or nonpartisan process, if its asymmetry was historically small, if its asymmetry would disappear under slightly different electoral conditions, or if it was no more asymmetric than most simulated maps.

In playing dumb, social dominators like Gorsuch, Alito, Roberts and Thomas continue a sordid tradition in federal litigation of liberty claims the last 65 years. Unequal public schools? Public accommodation of ethnic minorities? Housing discrimination? Equality of law and processes? Voting? What? Do we litigate every public functioning and process if someone makes a liberty claim?

It may not seem like it at the moment, but Republican rule is imperiled as at any point in post-World War II history, and Gill v. Whitford is one of the last chances Republicans have to hang onto to power for 50 years against the will of the population.

One must hate the fact that Anthony Kennedy has become the pivotal vote again in this critical case for Americans when this man is mired in mediocrity.

Rightwing Justices Voice Hostility Against Social Science and Liberty in Wisconsin Gerrymandering Case

Equal Justice is not here. What, are you grilling a steak?

Identity of the perpetrator should not diminish the victims' liberty claims

Analyses of oral argument at the Wisconsin gerrymandering case, Gill v. Whitford, (U.S. Supreme Court), reveal persisting features of modern Republican social domination in federal litigation—anti-intellectualism and pale regard for citizen liberties, especially voting rights.

Put another way, the four rightest justices' posture of dumb, anti-Constitutional and hostile points to a four-Justice dissent next year in Gill at which only results-committed ideologues like Roberts, Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch could arrive.

In Wisconsin in 2011, Republicans and only Republicans secretly engineered the gerrymandered state and congressional districting maps that all commenting parties in the political culture recognize as a means ensuring Republican power in the state legislature against political sentiment of the populace, except for the Republicans' State Senate's attorney Erin E. Murphy who said at orals, "you know, I would certainly dispute the premise that the decks are stacked here" in gerrymanders. (p. 29).

The Republican-drawn maps were found unconstitutional in 2016 by a three-judge federal panel.

This gerrymandered rigging of state democracy is an empirical fact, yet Neil M. Gorsuch for example, also played it deep-and-dumb at oral argument. [Gorsuch is performing the job for which he was appointed: Protect Republican interests against Americans, forcing one to wonder if this guy really has a clue about empirical investigation and raising the same credibility questions about the Supreme Court of the Untied States that Bush v. Gore and Citizens United present.]

Said Gorsuch at Oct. 3 orals addressing one set of proposed standards identifying an unconstitutional gerrymander: This standard is not a "real set of criteria," (p. 22). Wow, that's quick.

Erin Muphy's Law

Gorsuch later pretends to mystify straight-forward social science findings by comparing conclusions to seasoning a steak. "What is it that you want us to constitutionalize?" asks an incredulous or pretending-to be-incredulous Gorsuch. (pp 50-51). Nothing we can see, nothing we can do, nor anything should we do; that's for the political system, ignoring the clear First Amendment claims of the plaintiffs. [In the words of one of the Republicans' attorneys, Erin Murphy, extreme gerrymanders have an inherent competing social value anyway, by virtue that their extraordinary unfairness demonstrates the identity of the party in charge when the maps are secretly created. Said Murphy, asked about any social values a gerrymander may possess:  '[I]t produces values in terms of accountability that are valuable so that the people understand who isn’t and who is in power.' ... Replied Sonia Sotomayor, 'I really don't understand how any of that -- what that means. I mean, it -- it's okay to stack the decks so that for 10 years or an indefinite period of time one party, even though it gets a minority of votes, can't get a minor -- gets a minority of votes, can get the majority of seats?'  (pp 28-29)]. This new Murphy's-law reasoning can perhaps be applied to other liberty claims that compete against laws and processes with the intent to benefit discrete party coalitions. Hurt by laws legislated by party-line votes? Now, you know who did this to you. In other words, the identity of the perpetrator diminishes the victim's liberty claim.

Gerrymandering Is Real

Today in Slate Magazine, Nicholas Stephanopoulos, professor at the University of Chicago Law School specializing in election law, spells out the criteria identifying an unconstitutional gerrymander, in simple elements so easy a caveman can get it, for the benefit of Gorsuch, Alito and Roberts, [and Clearance Thomas, though Thomas doesn't speak or ask questions; he silently grunts disapproval at liberty claims]. (See also Stephanopoulos Explains the Research that Convinced SCOTUS to take the Wisconsin Gerrymandering Case.]

Writes Stephanopoulos this morning:

As one of the attorneys for the plaintiffs, I was able to attend Tuesday’s oral argument in Gill v. Whitford. At the argument, the justices probed, among other things, how the plaintiffs’ test for partisan gerrymandering would work, how reliable the social science is that underpins this test, and what the test’s implications would be for judicial involvement. Since the plaintiffs’ theory relies in part on my academic work, I’m in a good position to address these issues.

With respect to the test’s operation, Justice Gorsuch warned that a gerrymandering standard should not be like a 'steak rub.' That is, it should not be imprecise and opaque in its makeup: 'I like some turmeric, I like a few other little ingredients, but I’m not going to tell you how much of each.'

In reality, the plaintiffs’ proposed test for adjudicating gerrymandering claims is more akin to a detailed recipe than a mystery stew. The test has four elements, and litigants would be required to go through them one by one, proceeding to the next phase only if they satisfied the previous criterion. These four elements are:

1. Was the district plan enacted with the discriminatory intent of benefiting one party and handicapping another one? Maps drawn by a single party in full control of the state government often (but not always) have this motive.
   
   
2. Has the plan exhibited (or is the plan forecast to exhibit) a historically large partisan asymmetry? A partisan asymmetry means a map does not treat the parties equally in terms of how their votes translate into seats. A map’s asymmetry can easily be calculated and then compared to historical data to determine if it’s unusually big.
   
   
3. Is the plan’s partisan asymmetry durable? To find out, a range of plausible election results should be considered. A map’s asymmetry should be deemed persistent enough only if it would endure across this range of outcomes.
   
   
4. Is the plan’s partisan asymmetry unjustified? At this final step, the gold standard is to use a computer algorithm to simulate many maps that satisfy the state’s legitimate redistricting criteria. The challenged plan’s asymmetry is unjustified only if it exceeds that of most of the simulated maps.

Under this approach, there would be some easy cases, like the Wisconsin State Assembly plan at issue in Whitford. This plan’s authors admitted its pro-Republican intent. Its partisan asymmetry is worse than that of any map nationwide between 1972 and 2010. Its asymmetry would persist even if there was a massive Democratic wave. And its asymmetry is larger than that of any simulated assembly map. Conversely, it’s clear a plan would be upheld if it was designed through a bipartisan or nonpartisan process, if its asymmetry was historically small, if its asymmetry would disappear under slightly different electoral conditions, or if it was no more asymmetric than most simulated maps.

In playing dumb, social dominators like Gorsuch, Alito Roberts and Thomas continue a long, sordid tradition in federal litigation of liberty claims the last 65 years. Unequal public schools? Public accommodation of ethnic minorities? Housing discrimination? Equality of law and processes? Voting? What? Do we litigate every public functioning and process if someone makes a liberty claim?

Yes we do, it's a civil liberties thing. In this case, a First and Fourteenth Amendment thing.

Wisconsin Gerrymandering Case: Kennedy's Questions at Oral Argument Suggest Citizens' Win Against GOP, Experts Say

Wisconsin gerrymandering case, Gill v. Whitford,
at Oct 3 oral argument at U.S. Supreme Court.
 See Gill v. Whitford for transcript from
U.S. Supreme Court.

In Wisconsin's potentially precedent-setting gerrymandering case at the U.S. Supreme Court, several experts focusing on Justice Anthony Kennedy's questioning say a win for citizens' First Amendment rights against Republican incursions here appears likely.

The case is Gill v. Whitford, (U.S. Supreme Court).

Kennedy's questioning excoriated one of the Republicans' attorney, (representing the GOP-led Wisconsin State Senate), Erin E. Murphy.

Reports Mark Joseph Stern at Slate Magazine from the October 3 oral argument:

Erin E. Murphy then takes over for [Wisconsin Solicitor General Misha ] Tseytlin at the lectern. She represents the Wisconsin State Senate, where the Republican majority would very much like to stay in power. Kennedy promptly grills Murphy with a sharp hypothetical: Imagine a law that compels legislators to draw maps that consider 'traditional principles' but must maximally favor one party. Would that be constitutional? And under what principle? Murphy ducks the query for several minutes before an irked Kennedy eventually intones: 'I’d like an answer to the question.'

Murphy admits that such a law might constitute 'a First Amendment violation in the sense that it is viewpoint discrimination.' It’s an odd moment, since she is effectively telling the justices that, yes, her client violated the Constitution, but, no, the court can’t do anything about it. Justice Sonia Sotomayor seizes the moment to ask Murphy 'what the value is to democracy from political gerrymandering.' Murphy provides a gloriously nonsensical answer, asserting that 'it produces values in terms of accountability that are valuable so that the people understand who isn’t and who is in power.'

'I really don’t understand what that means,' Sotomayor deadpans. The liberal justices have eaten Murphy’s lunch, and she slinks off.

Stern's analysis is seconded by Adam Liptak and Michael D. Shear in the NYT:

After spirited Supreme Court arguments on Tuesday, there was reason to think Justice Kennedy may be ready to join the court’s more liberal members in a groundbreaking decision that could reshape American democracy by letting courts determine when lawmakers have gone too far.

Justice Kennedy asked skeptical questions of lawyers defending a Wisconsin legislative map that gave Republicans many more seats in the State Assembly than their statewide vote tallies would have predicted. He asked no questions of the lawyer representing the Democratic voters challenging the map.

See also Edward B. Foley - Moritz College of Law and Rick Hasen's Election Law. and Steven Mazie at The Economist.

U.S. Supreme Court Order on Gerrymanding Signals Bad Day for Wisconsin and Democracy

Madison, Wisconsin — The latest move by Justice Anthony Kennedy to consolidate Republican power over the Constitutional rights of voters in a Texas civil rights case bodes ill for the future of the potential precedent-setting Wisconsin gerrymandering case, (Gill v. Whitford, MortizLaw), (Beverly R. Gill, et al., Appellants v. William Whitford, U.S. Supreme Court).

Kennedy is the fifth vote in a mid-September order blocking two federal courts that ruled Republican-created Texas voting districts are racially discriminatory, (Abbott v. Perez, 17A225, and Abbott v. Perez, 17A245, U.S. Supreme Court).

The Texas case is widely seen as a signal that supposed-swing vote, Anthony Kennedy, will ignore Constitutional rights and find for Republican interests in Gill v. Whitford, to be heard in oral argument on Oct. 3.

Kennedy is the author of the infamous Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision that propelled Republican interests in a decision that rivaled Bush v. Gore in partisan favoritism and corruption on the United States Supreme Court.

"For those who expect Justice Kennedy to be a savior here—or in the Gill partisan gerrymandering case (where he also voted with the Court to stop an interim remedy in Wisconsin pending Supreme Court resolution)—this is one data point against that hope," notes election law expert, Rick Hasen.

See also Foley at MoritzLaw and the Sept. 5 Amicus brief by the League of Women Voters on "high-tech stealth gerrymander[ing], (p24)" that utilizes "sophisticated technologies" enabling legislatures to "cloak intentional, extreme partisan gerrymander, (p.3)."

Kennedy will likely ignore this cloaked, high-tech element of modern gerrymandering when Kennedy supplies the fifth vote for Republicans in 2018 in the ornate scam that defines modern Constitutional jurisprudence.

Could Kennedy be seized by a spasm of conscience? Ha.

Wisconsin Voter Obstruction Is as Republican as Racism and Corruption

Fitchburg Wisconsin — Wisconsin is regarded by civil rights workers as the worst state to be black and brown in America.

But not only because most white Republicans work to ship minorities into prisons and segregated sectors in Wisconsin's few urban regions of significant populations.

Blacks are targeted at the polls.

Republicans and only Republicans engineered the transformation of Wisconsin election law in an ambitious project to "disenfranchise voters likely to vote for the political party that does not control the state government," in the words of Judge Richard Posner of the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, in a major voting rights case still being litigated, (Mal Contends, Mal Contends, The Progressive).

Among those likely to vote against the Republican Party are the easily identifiable folks of black and brown skin color.

Though nationally the Republicans' obstructive photo voter ID law garnered wide attention, dozens of party-line statutes have been passed by Republicans since 2011, (Ferral, The Capital Times).

The Republican gerrymandering effort intended to stop non-Republicans from using the polling place to safeguard their interests is one major objective of the Republican anti-voting project, (ScotusBlog,  Election Law).

Obstruct Voters Locally

Other Republican initiatives include white poll workers interrogating voters at the polls, and in an escalation of conspicuous hostility the use of expensive civil citations against voting rights activists: Me.

This Summer Mal Contends will litigate two bogus disorderly conduct civil citations issued by the city of Fitchburg, Wisconsin against me.

One citation was written on August 9, 2016, Fall Primary Election Day. This citation will be argued in front of a jury this Summer in Dane County Circuit Court.

A second citation was written on May 10, 2017 alleging even more misconduct on Aug. 9, 2016 and served seconds after the litigation of the first citation in Municipal Court resulted in a judicial ruling of no fine. The presiding Municipal Judge, Hamdy Ezalarab, recused himself from hearing the second citation which will heard at trial on Aug. 3 at 6:00 p.m by a substitute judge

The Fitchburg City Attorney's office, Mark R Sewell and Valerie A. Zisman, is engaged in misconduct and malicious prosecutions, among other violations of ethics which I will pursue in the future.

Stay posted. This may appear light stuff from a small, corrupt Wisconsin city. It's not light stuff. From an email sent by me to the Wisconsin Elections Commission on Aug. 5, 2016, four days before I was obstructed from voting on Aug 9, received the first two of four visits to our home by armed Fitchburg Police, and received the first of now two civil disorderly conduct citations:

From: Mike Leon [ ...]
Sent: Friday, August 05, 2016 8:42 AM
To: Lowe, Diane - ELECTIONS
Subject: Polling Place
Importance: High

Diane,

Could you email me a URL or GAB (WEC) memo that would indicate how many election inspectors are supposed to hand out ballots at a table in a polling place? I believe it to be two.

A ... chief election inspector in our polling place, where I worked on April 5, positioned one election inspector at the ballots table, and predictably quite a voter bottleneck ensued.

Other elections to my memory featured two inspectors on ballots.

I need a memo or other publicly available authority on this two-people-on-ballots question.

I emailed our election and city clerk, around late April on this but no one got back to me. They are not too crazy about questions RE what they regard as their apparent turf, though I believe myself as a resident and long-time election inspector to be a stakeholder.

Administering elections should be about rules and regulations, to my view.

Mike
#

Wisconsin Republicans Want Reversal of Anti-Gerrymandering Ruling

Wisconsin Republicans want to continue gerrymandering state and federal districts to elect the most Republican legislature and Congressional delegation possible.

Gerrymandering is one of myriad tools by Republicans bent on engineering a Republican government irrespective of the will of voters and the rule of law.

A three-judge panel in November 2016 found the Republican-drawn, secret redistricting map unconstitutional.

In January 2017, the federal panel ordered a remedy to the unconstitutional, partisan gerrymander requiring "that the Legislature enact, and the Governor approve, a new redistricting map by November 1, 2017."

No, this is our state, is the effective answer of the Republicans who have appealed the panel’s decision to the United States Supreme Court.

On May 22, the Republicans filed an application to stay the order of the federal panel, failing to list the Constitutional rights of citizens in their argument. Rather, Republicans base their argument on the sovereignty of Wisconsin in which Constitutional rights of citizens hold little power against the state, (Wisconsin Department of Justice), (Supreme Court of the United States), (Supreme Court of the United States).

States rights over liberty interests of people.

From Amy Howe at SCOTUSBlog:

In March, the state of Wisconsin asked the Supreme Court to review a decision by a three-judge court striking down the redistricting map that the Republican-controlled legislature created after the 2010 census. The three-judge court concluded that the map was the result of partisan gerrymandering – that is, purposely drawing district lines to favor one party and put another at a disadvantage. The justices will consider the case at their June 8 conference, but yesterday Wisconsin added a new request to the case, asking the Supreme Court to block a court order requiring the state legislature to create a new plan by the fall.

Republicans want power. The United States Supreme Court may well decide this pursuit of power is Constitutionally permissible. No one knows what Justice Kennedy will do, (Stern, Slate). See also Ratfucked, (The New Yorker). So, Wisconsin Republicans are going for a big win.

The problem for Republicans is if the Supreme Court lets the status quo stand, Republicans lose and the Wisconsin people win.

(Whitford v. Nichol, (District Court (Case 3:15-cv-00421)) (2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 155022 (W.D. Wis., Nov. 17, 2015)), is a federal case challenging the constitutionality of Wisconsin's Republican-drawn legislative-redistricting scheme.