Here’s another consequence of the insane clown show our state government has become under the Satrap of Fitzwalkerstan and his minions. Meet the “ghost wards” of Eau Claire.
No one lives in these wards.
No one, in fact, will ever live in these wards.
But, because of the pre-emptive, highly partisan redistricting law the state Legislature passed last year, the Eau Claire City Council had to tweak its election maps last week to create two ghost wards.
However, in a rush to complete the process while they still maintained total control of state government before last summer’s recall elections, Republicans passed a bill making many districts more Republican-friendly. (For example, 19 of the 27 Assembly districts held by freshman Republicans now have a larger proportion of GOP voters.) Not only was the process a blatant example of gerrymandering – something our state hasn’t seen in decades – but its hasty nature put local governments in a bind: They were left drawing their new boundaries to conform to the states’ lines, not vice versa.
This small-scale, time- and money-wasting farce is just another unfortunate consequence of depending on self-interested partisan lawmakers [to draw the maps.]
The council members were, in a word, bemused by the need to do this.
In working the polls at the last schoolboard and Repub presidential primary election we had one such ghost ward. We didn’t set up a table for it, because there were no registered voters in that ward. Any votes coming from the ward were to be handled by the registrar. Despite the Repub. presidential primary candidates the Democratic candidates for the school board won over the Republican criticize & “reform by voucher” candidates by large margins. I don’t think people like the Republican attacks when they can see them for what they are.