The 2024 election is heating up fast. It’s causing many bad actors to get involved.
And now Supreme Court justices have rewritten the rules of the 2024 election.
This past Friday, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled that new legislative maps must be prepared in advance of the 2024 election, rejecting the previous ones drawn by Republicans.
Justice Janet Protasiewicz, who had just been elected to the bench in August, helped shift the court’s balance to a more liberal majority, and the coalition of Democrats who had challenged the maps the day before prevailed in a 4-3 decision.
In its order, the court indicated that it would draw them itself if the legislature and Democratic governor could not reach an agreement, as reported by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
The verdict argues that the Wisconsin Elections Commission should not use the present legislative maps for future elections because they violate the constitution’s provisions for contiguity due to the fact that the current state legislative districts encompass separate and disconnected areas.
According to the Associated Press, in April 2022, the Wisconsin Supreme Court upheld the identical maps that Democratic Governor Tony Evers had vetoed, a move that Democrats had claimed violated the separation of powers.
BREAKING: Wisconsin Supreme Court ON MAPS: "…we enjoin the Wisconsin Elections Commission from using the current legislative maps in future elections … remedial maps must be drawn prior to the 2024 elections." pic.twitter.com/NRvrb8bvQ6
— Matt Smith (@mattsmith_news) December 22, 2023
“This deal was sealed on election night,” Chief Justice Annette Ziegler wrote in her dissenting opinion. “Four justices remap Wisconsin even though this constitutional responsibility is to occur every ten years, after a census, by the other two branches of government.”
“The court of four’s outcome-based, end-justifies-the-means judicial activist approach conflates the balance of governmental power the people separated into three separate branches, to but one: the judiciary,” she continued.
“Such power-hungry activism is dangerous to our constitutional framework and undermines the judiciary.”
Republican lawmakers demanded and threatened impeachment of Protasiewicz, but the majority-sided justice chose not to step down from the case. The AP reports that Protasiewicz referred to the maps as “rigged” during her campaign.
The impact of new electoral maps in Wisconsin will be felt on both a state level and federal level.
Wisconsin has turned into a critical swing state in recent elections, as the state seems to be going back and forth in voting for Democrats and Republicans in state-level and national elections for the last fourty years.
In 2016, Donald Trump narrowly won Wisconsin in the general election cycle against Democrat opponent Hillary Clinton by a margin of about 23,000 votes.
In 2020, though, Wisconsin voters gave their nod to Joe Biden over Donald Trump in the Presidential election that November. The margin of victory for Joe Biden was just about 20,000 votes.
Such a hotly contested state can be easily tipped in the favor of one side with any small change.
In this case, electoral maps being drawn in the favor of the Democrats may very well make it likely that Joe Biden carries Wisconsin once again in 2024.
Though, of course, Joe Biden still has a major problem to overcome: his awful approval ratings.
Joe Biden continues to suffer from some of the worst approval ratings of any President since the Jimmy Carter years.
Donald Trump is clearly the leading candidate to win the 2024 Presidential election as he continues to dominate the polls against both his Republican opponents in the primary race and in a hypothetical rematch against Joe Biden in November.
Stay tuned to the DC Daily Journal.
