I think there's a place for regional representation as well, and that's always been one of my favourite things about the US system - senate and the house gives you both. But it could be the house needs some improvement in balancing numbers.

But I lean to the importance of rep by pop over regional rep, so if one is to have more power, I'd be putting that in the house. I've never been clear as to whether the senate being viewed as the more "senior" or elevated body actually had any basis in reality.

I think the senate is viewed as more senior bc it has more power. esp individually.

There are only 100 seats so individuals have more relative power.
The term of office is for 6 years vs. 2 for the house.
Presidential appointments, including for the Supreme Court, must be confirmed by the Senate.
But all revenue bills must originate in the House, so it's got that going for it.

Get rid of the electoral college? Every vote counts?

Before I made my post, I did my own searching and came across that exact same article. I was going to post it as the counterpoint and give my thoughts in the original post as well, but it would've made it that much longer and deprived you of your ability to do a 5 second google search and hit me with the, "not so fast!" I look out for you guys, too. It's no fun just monologuing.

I can't speak for the 73rd district they talk about near Duluth, but 13 and 14 is literally my back yard and has been for decades.

I concede that the 2011 redistricting there is suspect as hell. The 2020 redraw puts 13 back to what it should look like. There was no justification for splitting two new districts down the middle at 124th St, which is that dotted grey line you see on the provided maps. East and west of it may as well be different states. Brookfield is American flags and large wooded lots and cul de sacs and Wauwatosa is just Milwaukee-lite. It makes perfect sense that the citizens of Brookfield would've thrown a fit at somehow ending up in a blue district, sort of like the City of Sheboygan is complaining as the main target of that article. The main difference seems to be that Sheboygan is an island surrounded by red, and Brookfield is on the eastern edge of a bloc of red voters that stretches all the way to Madison. Wauwatosa is where the line starts to blur. 124th St is the border between Brookfield and Wauwatosa.

Their thought process behind leaving 14 a little bit ****ed seems to have been, "It's too far gone and won't matter anyway" and if the guy won by 27 points, then they're probably correct. It still makes absolutely no sense to have a huge chunk of Milwaukee ghetto in the same district as Wauwatosa. If anything, you'd think the NAACP would bitch that a bunch of 99.9% poor black neighborhoods are beholden to the changing whims of a downtown and western Tosa district that is 90% white and several quintiles higher on the income charts. My OP is still accurate, and would have 14 make more sense than what it does right now. That should be a proper purple district and go back and forth.

So you can still claim this is some gerrymandering bullshit, but the article doesn't do a great job at clarifying that the 2020 changes to 13/14 were effectively righting a wrong made in 2011. "Retreat and retrench" is definitely an odd way to put it. The same could possibly be said for their other two examples, but I have no idea.

Of course, all of this ignores the fact that there's no reasonable way to draw 99 assembly districts in Wisconsin that results in Democrats having a majority today. You'd have to dilute the populations of Milwaukee and Madison throughout the entire state. If democrats want more seats at that table, more of them need to step outside of their safe spaces and mingle with their brethren who have ventured out into the suburbs. Or, fix the disastrous state of criminality in Milwaukee and maybe some republicans will move back in and waste their votes in what are now 99% blue districts.