I thought WI was heavily gerrymandered....

[Tavarious Jackson]

This sudden fight looks to me like the Republicans are worried about 2018 or maybe Paul Ryan is worried. They want to oust election officials and install republican pawns. I also read an opinion piece on The Hill that suggested Paul Ryan may not seek re-election.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/wisconsin-election-officials_us_5a68f253e4b002283009199e?uun

[jodymarie aimee]

1. Good God

we are, look at one of our maps...that is why we can't move up here. 8 years of pure R hell.

[Tavarious Jackson]

2. That's what I thought..

So why are they worried all of a sudden? Do they predict a blue wave even in WI?

[jodymarie aimee]

3. Jesus, if any state deserves to ride that wave

it is us !!! We are so fucked here....no power no judges no transparency...we were the petri dish for the USA.....Trump is Walker.

[Tavarious Jackson]

4. Maybe I am wrong than..

What is your opinion on why Republicans are trying to oust the current election officials?

[Bettie]

5. They lost a seat they

thought they had fully locked down.

So, they need more room to cheat and make it harder to illegally keep people from voting. Getting rid of any oversight or enforcement of laws does that.

Born and raised in WI, barely recognize my home state these days.

[mythology]

6. Because gerrymandering isn't perfect

If you create a district that is say 55 R and 45 D, in a year when we're changing races by more than 10 points, that gerrymandering disappears. But if you gerrymander by too much, you waste more of your votes. To maximize your party's seats, you'd want to win yours by 1 vote and get 0 votes in every district you don't win. But that's not possible.

Also if they start doing worse than estimated with a demographic group, that changes the numbers.

[lkinwi]

7. They have no shame. We HAVE to vote these piles of garbage out!

[rlegro]

8. It's pretty simple, and ugly

Although previous reply from Bettie is right that, to some extent, Wis Repubs are freaking out over the recent, "safe" state Senate seat they lost badly in a special election, it's even more fundamental for them than that.

I say it's because they're wholly reactive, reactionary bulldogs. Many of them and all their leaders in the legislature and party are pissants of the Trump kind, easily offended and always compelled to take no prisoners.

So, after their pals on the state Supreme Court got Scott Walker and a bunch of "independent" conservative campaign groups off the hook for colluding in an election, the party proceeded to go after the prosecutors (chief among them a special prosecutor who's a Republican, just like Bob Mueller).

And they deleted from long-standing state law the political investigative functions of the state's John Doe closed-door process.

And they wiped out the non-partisan Government Accountability Board that oversaw state elections and replaced it with the bipartisan (not the same thing) Elections Board. Which new office carried over many non-political civil servants from the old. Which pissed off the GOP, even though that's the law. So now the GOP is thinking of just going the whole nine yards and creating a partisan office, in name still a bipartisan office, but only staffed with GOP agreeables.

The GOP targeted the two (among more to come, I'll bet) Elections Board staffers -- despite their civil service protections -- mostly just because the pair actually carried out their assigned duties and assisted prosecutors in handling paperwork and other duties for the Doe probe.

At least one of those two civil servants appears to be a Republican. The party doesn't care. It's Big Brother. It reflexively seeks to destroy all perceived opposition in the worst possible way, to make examples in every case, no matter how small the slight, perceived or real. Authoritarians of the worst sort.

[Tavarious Jackson]

13. Wow.

They're more evil than I thought and I thought they were pretty evil.

[OAITW r.2.0]

9. The concept of Gerrymandering is one of diminishing returns, I think.

Short-term, yeah, you can game the the districts to favor your Party, put eventually, the electorate figures it out...when you think you are 'bulletproof' from being thrown out of office and can ram through legislation that negatively impacts on all voters, you begin losing your base.

[uponit7771]

10. They are but to win they have to get 3% to above republican voters to take a seat

[aidbo]

11. Recent news maybe?

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-politics-pennsylvania/pennsylvania-court-orders-new-congressional-map-due-to-gerrymandering-idUSKBN1FB2N8

Pennsylvania court orders new congressional map due to gerrymandering
Joseph Ax
5 MIN READ
(Reuters) - Pennsylvania’s top court on Monday threw out the state’s congressional map, ruling that Republican legislators unlawfully sought partisan advantage, and gave them three weeks to rework it in a decision that could boost Democratic chances of retaking the U.S. House of Representatives.


In a 5-2 decision, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled the electoral map violated the state’s Constitution by manipulating the district boundaries to marginalize Democratic voters, a practice called partisan gerrymandering.

[Dread Pirate Roberts]

12. Certainly held up as an example of Republican manipulation here.

How the GOP Rigs Elections

On a quiet, tree-lined street in Racine, Wisconsin, in a neighborhood known as the Danish Village for its Scandinavian ancestry, sits a two-story white house with a large American flag hanging from the porch and a pro-police "We Back the Badge" sign in the yard. It's the home of Republican state Sen. Van Wanggaard, a 65-year-old former cop whose blond hair resembles that of Dennis the Menace.

Two houses to the south, Wanggaard's state Senate district – the 21st – abruptly cuts off to exclude the rest of the largely Democratic neighborhood. This used to be one of the state's most competitive Senate districts, encompassing all of rectangular-shaped Racine County, a 50/50 mix of urban and rural communities in southeast Wisconsin. But since the GOP gained control of the state's government in 2010, and redrew the legislative maps, the district is now shaped like a horseshoe, pulling in the Republican countryside of Racine and Kenosha counties while excluding heavily Democratic areas – except for the block where Wanggaard lives. "It's a prime example of how a party in power chose a district for their guy," says John Lehman, a Democrat who represented the 21st before Wanggaard.

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/gop-rigs-elections-gerrymandering-voter-id-laws-dark-money-w515664