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Slate News

How Wisconsin is a “Laboratory for Destroying Democracy”

Slate News

Slate Podcasts

News, Politics, News Commentary

4.56K Ratings

🗓️ 20 September 2023

⏱️ 29 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Wisconsin has been something of a model for Republicans looking to entrench themselves in the state legislature, and one key move has always been to draw the electoral map as favorably as possible. But now, the state Supreme Court has swung to the left – for the first time in 15 years. The GOP is scrambling to keep this battleground state deeply gerrymandered—and keep power in their own hands.


Guest: Ari Berman, national voting rights correspondent for Mother Jones.


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Transcript

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1:04.4

So, all right, how many times have you been to Wisconsin in the last decade or so?

1:08.5

Oh, man. Too many times, although I can say I can attest to the quality of the cheese

1:14.8

curds at this point.

1:19.8

Ari Berman reports for Mother Jones. He is an expert on voting rights,

1:25.0

and he is not just in Wisconsin for the cheese curds. He's there because he calls it a laboratory

1:31.4

for dismantling democracy. And he wants a peek inside. What he sees is not pretty, at least not

1:38.0

for Democrats. Despite the fact that Wisconsin is a swing state, the GOP has cemented control

1:44.7

over the state house. They've done that using aggressively gerrymandered maps. Just one example,

1:50.8

in 2018, even though Dem secured 54% of the vote statewide, that translated to a measly third

1:58.8

of the seats in the state assembly. The only way to explain the gap between the huge Republican

2:06.5

majorities in the legislature, and the fact that Wisconsin is voting for Democrats in all of

...

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