News Clips

The higher vote requirement is a critical component of any redistricting change, said Jay Heck, director of Common Cause Wisconsin. The plan the Assembly is voting on was unveiled at a news conference Wednesday afternoon. There was no public hearing, and Democrats and advocates say they were not consulted in the drafting of the bill. “It’s not serious," Heck said. "This is an act of desperation to head off the Supreme Court from redrawing the maps. ... It just doesn’t pass the smell test on any level.”

“Going back to 2011, there is such a long laundry list of pretty amazing things that they’ve done,” says Jay Heck, executive director of Common Cause Wisconsin. “And it’s almost like, what else could they do? And then they come up with something like this.” If the legislature rejects the maps drawn by the Legislative Reference Bureau, nonpartisan staff who work for the legislature, on two occasions, Republicans will have the power to draw their own partisan maps, which Heck says is “absolutely” Vos’ goal. Vos introduced the proposal Tuesday with no advance warning and the legislature plans to pass it on Thursday.  “The fact that Vos felt compelled to introduce this measure without consultation with any reform organizations like Common Cause Wisconsin and with no Democratic support and to immediately bring it to the floor of the Assembly without a public hearing or discussion is indicative of the disingenuous nature of this political stunt,” Heck wrote in email.

“The Ohio Redistricting Commission isn’t functional,” said Catherine Turcer, executive director of Common Cause Ohio, a good government group, adding that bodes poorly for the creation of fair maps. “If you can’t hear one another, you’re going to have trouble hearing the community, and hearing the folks that come to testify,” she said.

What they're saying: Catherine Turcer, executive director of the government watchdog group Common Cause Ohio, says the reforms of 2015 and 2018 were not enough to keep partisan officials from being "drunk on power." "What we've learned is it's not enough to have good rules in the Ohio Constitution," she tells Axios. "We need independent mapmakers who aren't influenced by loyalty to party."

“It’s self-serving, selective outrage,” Jay Heck, director of Common Cause of Wisconsin, a nonpartisan government watchdog group, said of impeachment. “Where was their outrage and their demands for recusal when conservatives in the past have weighed in about their values?”

“I think what you’re seeing all around the country are governors and Republican-controlled legislatures looking at what other states have done and saying, ‘Wow, look at that. We should try that here,’” said Jay Heck, executive director of Common Cause Wisconsin. Heck called the threat of impeachment an overreach and described concerns about Protasiewicz’s campaign statements as “selective outrage”, given previous conservative justices’ public comments on issues before the court. Heck pointed to a 2015 case in which multiple supreme court justices who received campaign donations from the Club for Growth ruled that the conservative group had not violated campaign finance laws in its dealings with former governor Scott Walker.