Measuring Geographic Noncontiguity in Wisconsin State Legislative Districts

Background

The Wisconsin Supreme Court has accepted a request to take up a case challenging the existing state legislative maps. Petitioners in the lawsuit make several arguments. Some of the arguments ask the court to find that “partisan gerrymandering violates” the state constitution’s “guarantee of equal protection,” as well as “free speech and association rights” and the “Maintenance of Free Government provision.”

Less ambitiously, perhaps, petitioners also argue that the “current legislative districts are unconstitutionally noncontiguous.” This argument, if accepted, could allow the court to throw out the current map without making reference to partisan advantage.

The relevant section of the Wisconsin Constitution is Article IV, Section 4, quoted below in its entirety (emphasis mine):

“[As amended Nov. 1881 and Nov. 1982] The members of the assembly shall be chosen biennially, by single districts, on the Tuesday succeeding the first Monday of November in even-numbered years, by the qualified electors of the several districts, such districts to be bounded by county, precinct, town or ward lines, to consist of contiguous territory and be in as compact form as practicable.”

Likewise, Senate districts are required to be composed of “convenient contiguous territory.”

Every square inch of land in Wisconsin is part of a city, town, or village, and many of those municipalities aren’t contiguous. In 1992, a federal court ruled that “literal contiguity” was not required by the state constitution. The judges wrote, “. . . [F]or the achievement of perfect contiguity and compactness would imply ruthless disregard for other elements of homogeneity; would require breaking up counties, towns, villages, wards, even neighborhoods. If compactness and contiguity are proxies for homogeneity of political interests, so is making district boundaries follow (so far as possible) rather than cross the boundaries of the other political subdivisions in the state.”

In other words, unconnected pieces of the same municipality could be placed into the same Assembly district. The 1992 ruling prioritized keeping municipalities intact over strict geographic contiguity.

In the early 1990s, it was Republicans, not Democrats, arguing for the enforcement of literal contiguity. Now, the roles are reversed. And, of course, the Wisconsin Supreme Court—not the federal district court then or any other federal court—has final authority as to the meaning of the Wisconsin constitution.

How many districts are noncontiguous?

Thus far, the specific contiguity-related statistics I’ve read have all been provided by the petitioners, who maintain that 55 Assembly and 21 Senate districts are noncontiguous. In support, their Memorandum of Law simply links to the legislative district maps provided by the Wisconsin Legislative Technology Services Bureau (see footnotes 1 and 21).

The remainder of this blog post is an explanation of an independent and repeatable method for measuring district contiguity across the state. My calculations yield slightly different results from those provided by the petitioners. While we both identify the same 21 Senate districts as being noncontiguous, I only find 52 Assembly districts with unconnected pieces.

Measuring contiguity

The basic building blocks of the current Assembly map are the census blocks used in the 2020 census. There are 203,059 total census blocks in the state of Wisconsin. Of those, 58,111 are unpopulated. Here’s what the statewide census block map looks like. We would need to zoom way in to clearly see the individual blocks in more populated areas. You can download this GIS file directly from the US Census Bureau here. It’s important to use the official Census Bureau GIS data because they are high quality and complete.

map of 2020 Wisconsin census blocks

Notice the census blocks that just cover water. These aren’t actually assigned to an Assembly district, but everything else is. The files showing which census blocks constitute each state legislative district are available from the Census Bureau here.

They look like this, with a column showing each census block number and another column showing a legislative district assignment. In Wisconsin, this is what a redistricting plan actually looks like.

table showing the first 10 rows of a block-assignment state legislative district file

After joining the Assembly district codes to the census block shapes, we can map all the individual blocks that make up a district. Here is the 18th district, on the west side of Milwaukee and stretching into eastern Wauwatosa. The large square in the center is Washington Park.

See here for more details and access to the source data files.

map showing the 2020 census blocks in the 18th Assembly District

We could conclude that this district is entirely contiguous using the eye-test alone. Sometimes, it’s more difficult to tell. In any case, examining all 132 state legislative districts separately would quickly become tedious. Fortunately, we can also measure this more formally using a set of open-source GIS and network analysis tools.

My code performing this analysis is available here in the files “AnalyzeAssembly.R” and “AnalyzeSenate.R.”

First, I subset all the census blocks in a given district. For each census block, I identify all of its neighboring blocks. Then, I turn that block adjacency list into a graph. Each graph consists of one or more components.

In a fully contiguous graph, such as that of Assembly District 18, there is just 1 component.

adjacency graph of Assembly District 18

The 88th Assembly District, on the other hand, consists of 3 components. In other words, there are 3 sections of AD-88 that don’t touch the other sections.

Adjacency graph of Assembly District 88

Literal islands

Recall that water-only census blocks aren’t assigned to a legislative district. To accommodate actual islands, I allowed the network analysis to identify graph components using the aquatic blocks as connectors, but I do not plot these blocks themselves. For example, here is the adjacency graph for AD-1 (Door County).

Notice that the offshore islands are assigned to component #1, even though they obviously can’t physically touch the mainland. So this district is fully contiguous.

adjacency graph of Assembly District 1

Summary

You can view my adjacency graphs for each Assembly and Senate district here.

Files showing each census block’s district and network-component-within-district are available here. This directory also includes tables summarizing the results of the network analysis for both the Assembly and Senate, along with accompanying documentation.

In total, 52 Assembly districts and 21 Senate districts are noncontiguous. Of those Assembly districts, 41 include some number of residents in at least two unconnected sections, as do 16 of the Senate districts.

The Assembly district with the largest disconnected population is the 47th, to the south of Madison. According to the 2020 census, 3,737 residents live outside the district’s main component. The 47th district also includes the largest number of census blocks outside the main component, both in total (129) and in populated blocks (61).

Adjacency graph of Assembly District 47

Nearby Assembly District 80 contains the largest total number of unconnected components, at 38 (not counting the primary component), although only 418 people live in these areas.

Adjacency graph of Assembly District 80

In the State Senate, district 16 has the largest population living outside the main component (2,282). The 27th Senate district contains the most unconnected components (32).

Overall, the 2020 census shows 7,953 Wisconsin residents living outside the main component of an Assembly district and 4,872 in an unconnected section of a Senate district.

Continue ReadingMeasuring Geographic Noncontiguity in Wisconsin State Legislative Districts

Faith and Determination Drive Milwaukee Port’s Director

You could learn important things about Jackie Q. Carter just by looking at the shirt she wore for her turn at the center of an interview program at Marquette Law School on October 11, 2023.

“God don’t play about me,” the shirt said in bold letters.

That leads to concluding that Carter focuses much of her life on religion, that she is dedicated and serious about the things she pursues, and that she is forthright in offering her perspectives.

Carter was selected by Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson in January 2023 to be director of the Port of Milwaukee. She is the first woman and first Black person to hold that position and one of the very few women or Black people to hold a major executive position for any port in the United States.

Carter was the guest for a “Get to Know” session moderated by Derek Mosley, director of the Lubar Center for Public Policy Research and Civic Education at Marquette Law School. The new series is aimed at giving interesting people opportunities to talk about themselves and their work.

Carter showed during the hour–long program how intent she is on both religion and her work for the port.  “If you ever heard me speak in public, you know how I always want to stop and honor God,” she said as the conversation began. “The foundation of who I am is my faith.”

Most of Carter’s childhood years were spent living near Washington Park on Milwaukee’s west side. Her family was on welfare at times, and she was raised primarily by her grandmother, who was the person who “founded me in the faith,” Carter said. Carter was a student at several Milwaukee– area colleges and universities, culminating in her receiving an MBA degree from Concordia University in Mequon, and she explored several career possibilities before going to work for Milwaukee city government, first in the city treasurer’s office and then in the budget office.

That led to her becoming the finance officer for the port, which is part of city government. And when the port director announced that he was retiring, he urged her to apply for the job. She and her husband prayed on it, she applied, and she was selected.

Carter is a determined booster of the port and its importance. The port is a driver of the economy not only of Milwaukee but of Wisconsin as a whole, she said. The port is, in effect, the landlord for shipping operations and other users of the 467 acres of land it owns, including the Summerfest grounds and the Discovery World museum. Mountains of salt, visible from the Lake Freeway that passes over port property, ismake up one of the best– known commodities that arrives in the part, but Carter described other products handled in large volumes, including steel and agricultural goods.

One area of growth for the port has been tourism, with increasing numbers of cruise ships docking in Milwaukee. Carter said the first cruise ship arrived in 2014. In 2023, there were 33 cruise ship arrivals, involving about 13,000 passengers.

Carter, who became a minister in 2022, sees the hand of God in leading her to her position with the port. “The Lord was laying that path out,” she said. And she is appreciative of people such as Mayor Johnson and port staff who have backed her success.

But she is also firm in asserting her own qualifications and accomplishments. “I earned the right to sit here in this chair,” she said. “Nobody gave it to me.”   

Video of the “Get to Know” program may be viewed by clicking on the link below.

Get to Know: Jackie Carter – YouTube

Continue ReadingFaith and Determination Drive Milwaukee Port’s Director

Horrified but Optimistic: Criminal Justice System Leaders Assess Pandemic’s Impact in Milwaukee

OTI Justice in the Time of Covid“Everything is connected to everything.” That phrase, spoken by Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm, summed up much of the content of a program on the impact of COVID-19 on Milwaukee County’s criminal justice system on Tuesday (Sept. 26, 2023) in the Lubar Center of Marquette Law School’s Eckstein Hall.

There were several ways of looking at that thought:

First, there was a long list of impacts of the COVID pandemic, including major services that were shut down, disrupted, or limited for long periods. It wasn’t one aspect of the pandemic that was the key, it was all the aspects coming together to impair the effectiveness of law enforcement and courts.

Second, as speakers at the program put it, the justice system is an ecosystem and problems in one aspect of the system impact problems in other parts. For example, a shortage of public defenders or court reporters or jails cells affects the work of police and courts broadly.

Third, five key leaders who were on the panel assessing the pandemic’s effect on the criminal justice system in Milwaukee emphasized how well they worked together during the pandemic, how closely they stayed connected to teach other, and how much they were not willing to point fingers at others in blame for major problems that occurred.

And fourth, as Chisholm put it, the justice ecosystem is part of the broader ecosystem of how the community functions or doesn’t function, as was especially true during the heights of COVID. One example: “You shut a school system down and then you’re shocked that a bunch of young kids are stealing cars and driving recklessly?” Chisholm asked.

Put all the impacts together and you have a justice system in which many services were reduced, problems increased, and bad things happened in Milwaukee.

The focus of the program was an August 2023 report from the Wisconsin Policy Forum titled “Under Pressure: The Milwaukee Justice System’s Recovery from COVID-19.”

Rob Henken, president of the policy forum, began the Lubar Center program with a summary of data collected for the report, including increased criminal offenses, led by a huge increase in motor vehicle thefts; a decline in arrests by Milwaukee police that Henken called “precipitous”; declining rates in how many criminal cases were being charged by the district attorney’s office; and development of a large backlog of court cases.

Reacting to the findings in the report were Chief Judge Carl Ashley of the Milwaukee County Circuit Court; Tom Reed, Regional Attorney Manager of the State Public Defender’s Milwaukee Trial Office; Jeffrey Norman, Milwaukee Police Chief; Mary Triggiano, who was chief judge in Milwaukee County during the heights of the pandemic and who is now director of the Andrew Center for Restorative Justice at Marquette Law School; and Chisholm. Moderating the program was Derek Mosley, director of the Law School’s Lubar Center for Public Policy Research and Civic Education.

Ashley, the current chief judge, said he was “extraordinarily proud” of the way leaders in the system as a whole worked to keep services going and deal with problems. While not minimizing problems that developed, he said he was optimistic that improvements in the system as a whole would come out of what was learned ruing the pandemic.

“We are not going to prison our way out of our criminal justice issues,” Ashley said. “This is a tremendous opportunity for us to do things differently.” He said how the system overall deals with people with mental health problems is one area where improvements can be made.

Reed described the challenges of keeping public defender work going during the pandemic, as well as in recent years more broadly. Shortages of attorneys to represent indigent defendants had developed and then grew worse during the pandemic. And without attorneys to represent defendants, cases could not proceed. Reed said there are points when he faced deep problems finding attorneys in a timely manner. Things have gotten better, he said, and provisions in the current state budget increasing pay for defenders, as well as assistant district attorneys, are beginning to help.

Triggiano said that at the start of the COVID crisis, people were told shutdowns would last two weeks. “Who knew?” she asked. She said that as much as backlogs built and problems grew, people worked cooperatively day and night to restore services. In some ways, such as the resumption of jury trials, the justice system did better than other sectors.

Norman said that data such as the number of crimes and arrests needed to be looked at in the context of all that police were dealing with. Assessing the performance of the police department isn’t only about data such as the number of arrests but about “quality arrests,” as he put it. One important factor during the pandemic was restrictions on how many people could be put in jail, he said, which meant some lesser offenses were not leading to arrests and incarcerations.

Chisholm said the data in the Policy Forum’s report “horrified us,” but the leaders wanted to be open and candid about what they had faced and continue to face. “Having the highest rates of homicide and nonfatal shootings, it has horrified everybody up here,” he said. “We’re doing everything we can to try get that back under control. But we’re not going to see anyone pointing fingers at each other because we all share this.”

He said everyone on the panel “got into public service . . . because they believe in trying to make the community a better place.”

Chisholm gave an example of the pandemic’s impact. He said expansion of the Sojourner Family Peace Center, a non-profit that serves woman and children impacted by domestic violence, was intended to reduce such violence and stabilize lives. He said that, unfortunately, the pandemic proved the theory was correct: As the pandemic has reduced the use of Sojourner’s services, “we’ve seen unprecedented levels of serious violence and homicides that have been domestic violence related.” Milwaukee needs preventive services such as this, he said.

Chisholm said many of the factors behind reduced crime rates before the pandemic hit, such as improved health and social services, were knocked out by the pandemic.

He said that in 2019, he thought the overall situation in Milwaukee was “crappy” when it came to efforts to improve lives and reduce problems, but there were some positives. Now, he said, leaders are trying to get back to the 2019 level. He said he hopes that will occur by the end of 2023.

Video of the program may be watched by clicking here.

Continue ReadingHorrified but Optimistic: Criminal Justice System Leaders Assess Pandemic’s Impact in Milwaukee