Good morning.
Friday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 41. Sunrise is 6:23 AM and sunset 5:48 PM for 11h 25m 04s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 4.1% its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1917, Jeannette Rankin of Montana becomes the first female member of the United States House of Representatives.
Under Wisconsin redistricting from a decade ago, large changes favoring the WISGOP ignored any principle of least change, but this year a conservative Wisconsin Supreme Court decided that least change would be the standard to which redistricting would be held. Least change now favors drastic WISGOP changes a decade ago.
For it all, the state’s court decided for the Evers Administration’s version of least change. Shawn Johnson and Bridgit Bowden report Wisconsin Supreme Court chooses Evers’ ‘least changes’ redistricting plan (‘The plan from Evers’ would still maintain Republican leans in Wisconsin’s political maps’):
The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled Thursday it would use the “least changes” redistricting plans submitted by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers as Wisconsin’s political maps for the next decade.
In the 4-3 decision, conservative swing Justice Brian Hagedorn wrote that of all the plans submitted, Evers’ plan best complied with criteria laid out by the court and met all the requirements of the Wisconsin and United States constitutions.
The court ruled in November that any new redistricting plan should make as few changes as possible to the maps the Republican Legislature passed, and former Republican Gov. Scott Walker signed, in 2011. That meant any new map approved by the court would lean Republican.
According to an analysis by Marquette University research fellow John Johnson, Republicans would still keep strong majorities in the Legislature under Evers’ map. Even in a statewide tie election, Democrats would only be likely to win 38 out of 99 seats in the Assembly and 11 out of 33 seats in the Senate.
But choosing Evers’ maps over competing plans submitted by Republican members of Congress and the Legislature was, under the circumstances, a win for Democrats. In the Legislature, it could mean the difference between simple Republican majorities and supermajorities that could override any governor’s vetoes.
The opinion of the court appears immediately below: