(CN) — Republicans who control the Wisconsin Legislature have been busy lately. But most telling amid this activity is not what will become law, but what will not.
A raft of election reform bills, for example, indicates deeper truths about the Badger State’s chasmic partisan divide and how GOP legislators have used grievance and paranoia to aid their bid for future success in a zero-sum fight with liberals.
Truthfully, one could be forgiven for believing they and Democratic Governor Tony Evers do not speak the same language, let alone hold the same values, in a way unsatisfactorily explained by swing-state desperation or the frustrations of divided government.
Since Evers beat two-term incumbent Republican Scott Walker in 2018 by around 29,000 votes, he has been at constant loggerheads with Republicans buttressed by safe legislative majorities.
Weeks after his election, Republicans rushed an extraordinary floor session to pass lame-duck laws broadly limiting the powers of Evers and incoming Attorney General Josh Kaul, also a Democrat, before they took office. Most of the laws were later upheld by the conservative-majority Wisconsin Supreme Court.
Whether this poisoned the well before the two sides could make nice is debatable. But the disconnect has lasted: most anything Evers has tried to act on — the budget, special legislative sessions, Covid-19 — Republicans either directly obstruct or support other conservatives’ attempts to.
Republicans’ defiant outlook somewhat explains the election bills from February, but other factors are also at play.
In part, the legislation — echoing measures prioritized by Republicans nationwide after former President Donald Trump’s 2020 loss and proof-challenged insistence he was cheated out of a second term — bars election clerks from fixing mistakes on absentee ballot envelopes; disallows anyone but a voter, a family member or legal guardian from returning their absentee ballot; and requires photo ID each time a voter requests an absentee ballot, not just the first time, among similar measures restricting ballot access.
Evers has not yet vetoed the bills, but he almost certainly will, as he did other bills limiting absentee voting in August. The governor has repeatedly said any law making it harder to vote is a nonstarter.
Republicans lack the votes to override Evers’ vetoes, so they also passed constitutional amendments related to elections, like one saying only U.S. citizens can vote, which is already federal law. The amendments, which the governor cannot stop, would take until at least next year for voters to ratify.
Despite an awareness, by now, of Evers’ priorities, Republicans have forged ahead with a wave of measures from the right-wing wish list. This features bills creating felonies for individuals who attend protests where riots ensue and those who damage certain statues, allowing concealed carry permit holders to possess guns on school property, prohibiting some employers from requiring employees to be vaccinated against Covid-19, creating a “parental bill of rights,” and protecting gun makers from lawsuits.
Given the vanishingly remote likelihood of Evers enacting any of this, the legislators’ goal cannot be lawmaking. So, what is?
Experts and insiders see similar causes and symptoms of the dysfunction, as well as some rationale for the courtship of what were once fringe issues.
Part of the problem, some say, is that due to gerrymandering and polarized politics, Wisconsin has become comprised of too many one-party districts where primaries are paramount and general elections are foregone conclusions.
Barry Burden, political science professor at the University of Wisconsin and director the university’s Elections Research Center, says both major parties nationwide have become more homogenized over the past decade. Coupled with partisan gerrymandering exploiting rural/urban, Republican/Democrat geography, “the GOP essentially created a bullet-proof majority in the Assembly that was immune to changes in voter choices.”