SCOTUS Coming To The Rescue Of GOP Gerrymanderers | Ari Berman | TMR

Sam hosts Ari Berman, writer at Mother Jones, to discuss the midterm elections and his recent piece “How Wisconsin Became the GOP’s Laboratory for Dismantling Democracy”. Ari Berman then joins, diving right into the severe shift in Wisconsin politics that followed the election of Scott Walker in 2010, as a Koch-backed Republican trifecta launched their case study for attacking democracy on the state level, going after the core of the swing state’s progressive base by undermining unions and voting rights, reforming campaign finance laws, and instituting intense gerrymandering. This brings Ari to parsing through the dichotomy that ensued over the next decade, as Wisconsin’s demos continued to vote narrowly between the two parties while the GOP majorities in the state houses continued to grow, best seen in the 2018 midterms where Democrats won 54% of votes statewide, yet Republicans still held 64% of seats. Next, they tackle the future of gerrymandering as the Supreme Court tiptoes closer and closer to undermining the involvement of either independent commissions or state courts in the matter, before wrapping up the interview by walking through the role of governors in fighting back against gerrymandered legislatures (it’s getting increasingly difficult) and why this will continue to be a major issue until we get a new Supreme Court.

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It is a pleasure to welcome you back to the program and it's been too long, frankly Ari Berman, author of Give us the ballot and herding donkeys and a writer at Mother Jones magazine. Ari is welcome back to the program. Hey Sam. good to see you again. Nice to meet you. you wrote a couple days ago the democracy crisis was averted but gerrymandering could still save the GOP. Let's go back to the piece I wrote about Wisconsin and its being a laboratory for dismantling democracy. This goes all the way back to the election of Scott Walker. That goes back to this a project by the Koch brothers and the AFP Americans for Prosperity if I remember correctly. walk us through that. I think Wisconsin really has been the case study for how Republicans have undermined democracy at the state level and then how they use the states to take over power at the national level as well. Because you had basically a 50-50 swing state with a long Progressive tradition. Republicans got control of it in 2010 like they got control of so many states in that election. and they worked very aggressively to entrench their own power by going after unions making it harder to vote changing campaign Finance laws and most crucially by passing incredibly gerrymandered maps. That means that it would be impossible to vote them out of power. so I looked at both the 10-year strategy that's been deployed in Wisconsin very very effectively. and then I also looked at how it would affect this election. and it's really remarkable if you look at the numbers. Governor Tony Evers Democrat won 51% of the vote he won by 3.5 points in 2022 which is a Landslide by Wisconsin standards. but Republic weekends got 67 percent of seats in the state senate. and 65 percent of seats in the State House. Basically, they came two assembly seats of getting a supermajority in the legislature even though Democrats won four out of five Statewide offices. so basically they've created a system as far as legislative elections that's basically voter-proof. and the reason why I said the democracy crisis was averted was that so many of these election deniers won.