Who are the 2 referees the Wisconsin Supreme Court named to review new maps?
On this episode of WisconsinEye’s Newsmakers, Host Lisa Pugh sits down with Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) to review the past year and look ahead to 2024. Speaker Vos addresses the redistricting case and legislative maps.
When the Wisconsin Supreme Court last week ordered parties to a redistricting lawsuit to draw new legislative maps, it also named two referees to evaluate the maps’ adequacy.
The two consultants — University of California, Irvine political science professor Bernard Grofman and Carnegie Mellon University postdoctoral fellow Jonathan Cervas — may not be household names in Wisconsin, but they have played prominent roles in settling map disputes in other states.
In Wisconsin, they’ll weigh in on whether the maps abide by the court’s standard that any new maps contain equally populated districts; be bounded by county, precinct, ward or town lines; include only contiguous territory; be as compact as possible; and comply with federal law.
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They’ll also assess whether the maps preserve communities of interest, reduce municipal splits, and are drawn so that no party benefits more than the other.
The new maps must be submitted by Jan. 12, and the professors’ evaluations are due by Feb. 1. Here’s what to know about them:
Bernard Grofman
Grofman was recently one of two special masters the Virginia Supreme Court hired to draw new maps after that state’s bipartisan commission deadlocked on selecting new ones. Nominated by Democrats, Grofman worked with a Republican-nominated special master to forge new congressional and legislative maps in Virginia that followed similar principles the Wisconsin Supreme Court set forth last week.
The Virginia court prohibited either consultant from working with political parties or partisan organizations during their work.
Grofman took a more active role in Virginia — drawing the maps — than he’ll be taking in Wisconsin, where he’s evaluating maps that others submit. But a memo outlining his process in Virginia provides some insight into how he may evaluate maps here.
Critically, to make sure the Virginia maps favored neither party, he ensured the maps he drew provided representation to both parties that reflected how they performed in statewide vote shares from both recent legislative and presidential elections. The resulting congressional maps gave Republicans one more likely seat than they had before.
Outside of consulting with courts on new maps, which he had done in many states prior to Virginia, Grofman’s research interests include issues of representation and the use of statistics in law.
He has made only one donation to a federal political campaign, according to the Federal Election Commission. It was a $200 donation in 1996 to former Madison Mayor Paul Soglin, who ran unsuccessfully as a Democrat for the U.S. House.
Jonathan Cervas
Cervas has also been involved in creating new political maps. After a New York judge found Democratic-proposed maps unconstitutional, a judge hired Cervas to redraw boundaries for the state’s U.S. House seats and state Senate.
The maps he drew boosted Republican odds of capturing more seats, earning Cervas the ire of Democrats. Under his proposal, there were eight competitive seats. Under the rejected Democratic proposals, there were just three.
He told the New York Times that his political leanings were pro-democracy, adding that value makes him align more closely with one party than another.
He is registered as an independent in Pennsylvania, his home state, and recently voted in a Republican primary, the New York Times reported.
Cervas studied with Grofman, later serving as a research assistant as the latter worked on several redistricting cases. He has served as the redistricting consultant for the Pennsylvania Legislative Reapportionment Commission and consulted with courts in several other states.
He used to be a bartender in Las Vegas. There, he made one political donation in 2006: a $25 donation to Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards’ campaign, according to the FEC.
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