News Clips

Seventy-five percent of Ohio residents voted in favor of new rules Tuesday to end the practice of partisan gerrymandering, add more momentum for other battles on the issue in states like Wisconsin.

“It’s transparent. This was a power play,” Jay Heck, executive director of Common Cause Wisconsin, told the Prospect. “Everyone knew what was going on.”

Wisconsin voters on Tuesday sent a stinging rebuke to the state Republican Party, rejecting its hand-picked candidate for state Supreme Court as well as an effort to eliminate a key watchdog position.

As Jay Heck of the nonpartisan Common Cause of Wisconsin noted to Urban Milwaukee, “Walker feared that a special election held in the 1st State Senate District and the 42nd Assembly would have produced Democratic victories which, in turn, would bode ill for his own re-election prospects.”

The recent machinations by Gov. Scott Walker and the majority party in the Wisconsin Legislature were not rushed to the forefront of state government consideration to "save taxpayer dollars" or to "avoid confusion." There is not a single person in the Capitol — and very few outside of it — who believe that to be the case for a second.

CC/WI Director Jay Heck's testimony against changes to Special Elections law begins at 2:18:57