Wisconsin’s Supreme Court Election Is Good News For Canada

You may be thinking, what does a Wisconsin Supreme Court election possibly have to do with Canada? That's a good question, and it deserves a good answer, because as counterintuitive as it may seem, what happened in Wisconsin has implications for our country.

Let's start there, by looking at exactly what happened in Wisconsin.

In the U.S., State Supreme Court Justices are elected by the voters, and the court has long been divided along partisan lines, befitting Wisconsin's status as a swing state with a near-equal number of Democrats and Republicans. Control over the court has a direct implication for national politics in the U.S., as the state redistricting process - deciding how congressional districts are drawn - is often highly partisan and ends up being ruled on by the state court. Thus, a liberal-leaning court means it's more likely that districts will be drawn in a way that leads to fewer Republican congressional wins in the state, while a conservative-leaning court means the opposite. And given that the Republicans have a very narrow majority in the U.S. House of Representatives, what happens in Wisconsin could help decide control of Congress - and thus control of investigative power/ability to stymie the Executive branch - in the next election.