This Modern World

have the fairest maps in the country. As you know, as a former legislator, there are almost unlimited ways to draw maps and the technical technological advances and computer processing power that can go into this now makes it so easy to tweak them in a million ways.

We can put in data and we can get tens of thousands of maps that meet various legal criteria within a matter of hours. But I think we're headed in the right direction. And I also think that one of the reasons we should be hopeful is I think that our democracy at the national level has just sustained a truly unprecedented attack. And people care, even people who voted for Trump, even people who are unhappy with some of the election outcomes, they believe in democracy, not all of them, but many of them and democracy continues to pull well. And people are paying attention to these issues in a way as never before two years ago, when I was first starting to think about Law Forward, and I would go to people and I would say democracy of Wisconsin is under assault. Most people, even people who agreed with me on a lot of issues, would give me a skeptical look. Now, everybody sees it. It’s out in the open and people do really believe in the importance of in Lincoln’s words—democracy of the people by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth. People care about that around the country. People care about that in Wisconsin, and that gives me hope.

Louis Fortis is Publisher of the Shepherd Express and served in the Wisconsin State Assembly.