This is the first in a series of posts this fall concerning redistricting in Wisconsin—a focus of the Law School’s Lubar Center for Public Policy Research and Civic Education. 

In a race against time to draw new district lines for local governments, three of Wisconsin’s four largest counties are off to a slower-than-recommended start—a delay that could throw the state’s three biggest cities behind schedule as well.

Perhaps not coincidentally, those three counties—Milwaukee, Dane, and Brown—are the same ones that have created independent advisory bodies to devise their supervisory district maps. That means they faced the added challenge of inventing a new redistricting process when their timeline was more compressed than ever before.

By contrast, the Waukesha County Board used its traditional process, working through a board committee, and approved a preliminary supervisory district map on September 14, one day ahead of the target date recommended by the Wisconsin Counties Association.

All of the state’s counties and municipalities, along with the Racine Unified School District (RUSD), are under pressure to finish redistricting before December 1, when candidates can begin circulating nomination papers to run in the spring 2022 elections. If any of them miss that deadline, the legal consequences are uncertain.

Political redistricting in Wisconsin is important to shaping long-term policies. The process for deciding political boundaries at all levels is controversial and hot. The courts, more so than legislative chambers, are likely to be the central arenas for deciding a number of the important outcomes in the now-unfolding decennial cycle.

Put those three statements together and you see why Marquette Law School’s Lubar Center for Public Policy Research and Civic Education is giving redistricting special attention, with the goal of providing evenhanded background and insight.

A blog post that will follow this is the first in a series of Lubar Center posts on the Marquette Law School Faculty Blog that will focus on aspects of the current work on redistricting.

Reporting and writing the posts is Larry Sandler, a freelance journalist with more than 38 years of experience covering government and business in southeastern Wisconsin for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and other publications.