Author: knutson4

Quoted: The Republican resolution passed the Senate and Assembly on party-line votes, and when Republicans released their maps in October, they were pretty true to its principles.

Because of that, the 2021 map looked a lot like the 2011 map. In the world of redistricting shorthand, this is often referred to as “core retention.” But Rob Yablon, University of Wisconsin-Madison law professor, has a different name for it: “gerrylaundering.”

“‘Gerrylaundering’ is an attempt to perpetuate an existing biased map by carrying forward the existing lines with as little change as you can get away with,” Yablon said.

Quoted: Staffen said it’s unclear how many Connecticut warblers have historically been found in Wisconsin. There are around 1.5 to 2 million birds worldwide, said Stan Temple, professor emeritus of forest and wildlife ecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Temple noted Connecticut warblers and other species like spruce grouse and boreal chickadees are occupying the southern edge of their range in northern Wisconsin. Those forest-dwelling species are contending with habitat loss as climate change is causing those forests to shift further north. In the next several decades, the southern limits of the songbirds’ range likely will no longer include Wisconsin.

“So in the long term, assuming that climate change continues unabated, the bird is destined to disappear from the Wisconsin landscape, regardless pretty much of what we do,” said Temple.

Quoted: “It feels a lot like the criticism we heard five or six years ago of the GAB,” University of Wisconsin-Madison Elections Research Center director Barry Burden said in a recent interview.

What is the fairest and most efficient way for citizens to pay for police and fire protection, safe streets, libraries, parks and other public services cities provide?

This is the real question University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Manuel Teodoro indirectly raised in his recent commentary urging elimination of the long-standing practice of municipal water utilities making payments in lieu of taxes — what are known as PILOTs — to municipalities. But Teodoro is mistaken in calling for an end to PILOTs in the absence of making any other changes to how municipalities are funded.

Quoted: Barry Burden, the director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said the people Gableman is meeting with “are all election skeptics who have bought into the big lie.”

Gableman, who last year without evidence claimed the election was stolen, has insisted he has no preconceived ideas about his review and hopes to find that the election was run properly.

“It’s hard to see how he could ever reach such a conclusion given this set of oddballs who he’s working with,” Burden said.

Quoted: “The idea is is that they will discuss the evidence, share their opinions with one another, spend time discussing whether they think the prosecution has met their burden of proof, but they don’t really get a blueprint for how to go about doing that other than to just discuss the evidence and listen to one another and keep an open mind,” said John Gross.

Gross is a UW-Madison Law School professor who has more than twenty years of experience serving as a criminal defense attorney. Gross expects jurors will spend a great deal of time sifting through video evidence.

“The jury is going to be able to look at that video as much as they would like in their jury room and figure out what they think you can see and hear and then conclude from all of that video evidence,” he said.

Quoted: Keith Findley, a professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School, called the lack of decision “odd.”

“The only reason I can think of for waiting is perhaps he wants to give the jury a chance to acquit so he doesn’t have to, but that’s speculation on my part,” Findley, co-founder of the Wisconsin Innocence Project, said in an interview.