State Senators debated an amendment to Wisconsin’s new redistricting law Monday that would move up a year the date new district lines would apply to elections.
State Sen. Mary Lazich, R-New Berlin, who authored the amendment, said during a Senate Committee on Transportation and Elections hearing she was concerned possible recall elections of odd-numbered state senators held before Nov. 6, 2012 would be conducted in old districts, not the new districts that took effect in August.
On Nov. 6, 2012, senators from even-numbered districts will have general elections. But senators from odd-numbered districts will not have general elections until 2014.
Constituents from old district lines would vote in a recall election of a senator from an odd-numbered district if it is held before Nov. 6, 2012, the date the Government Accountability Board determined new district lines would go into effect for elections.
But State Sen. Jon Erpenbach, D-Middleton, said he thinks it is wrong the people who voted in a candidate would not be able to vote out a candidate.
“How is it fair that a municipality can vote in a recall election that didn’t have the opportunity to vote in the general election in the first place?” Erpenbach said. “You are essentially treating these like general elections, not recall elections.”
State Sen. Spencer Coggs, D-Milwaukee, said new voting lines should not be made official until senators have general elections.
“Just put it back to the way the law has always been in the state of Wisconsin … that we represent the districts we were elected to until there are regular elections,” Coggs said.
But supporters of the amendment argued if people are not allowed to recall legislators from the new district lines, many would be stuck with an unwanted senator until general elections in 2014.
“This recall landscape is a whole new world for us,” Lazich said. “If we do [what Coggs suggested] we are disenfranchising those odd numbered districts.”
State Sen. Glenn Grothman, R-West Bend argued the amendment is a “common sense, automatic, technical change that we should whip through the committee and the state Senate.”
