From George Vernon

Monroe

To the Editor:

The Times has recently published several letters suggesting that Judge Janet Protasiewicz is a radical activist who, if elected to the Supreme Court, would fail to recognize that the job of the Court is simply to facilitate democracy by enforcing the laws passed by the legislature. The problem that these letters fail to address is that the legislature itself, has been so radically gerrymandered that in what is essentially a 50-50 state Republicans control supermajorities that make a mockery of “democracy.” This was not the case in the days of Robert LaFollette, Lee Dreyfus.

Tommy Thompson or other distinguished past Republicans who did not rule with a “my way or the highway” mentality. But  unfortunately it is today and it has been so for the past 13 years.  

Nothing in the Wisconsin nor the U.S. Constitution mandates or countenances the flouting of democratic norms that reduces half or more of the voters to bystanders in the legislative process. If Judge Protasiewicz becomes Justice Protasiewicz and  facilitates the end of gerrymandering, she will not be flouting democracy, she will be restoring and upholding it. If a legislature elected fairly in accordance with the wishes of the majorities in those fairly drawn districts chooses to overturn Wisconsin’s pre-Civil War abortion ban, it will be through the will of a majority of Wisconsin voters, not through personal preferences of Justice Protasiewicz.