New legislative [district] maps that favor Republicans have been drawn for the regular fall 2012 elections. When Republicans drew those maps, they wrote State law to say recall elections conducted before then would be run under the current maps.Good luck arguing an advisory opinion supersedes State law, I guess.
But Republicans on Thursday pointed to a 1982 opinion by then-Attorney General Bronson La Follette that said recall elections would be conducted under new legislative maps. They said that opinion and others trumped the recent language in State law that says the new maps don't take effect for elections until fall 2012.
That language was tucked into the bills that established the new maps, and it remains unclear why Republicans wrote them that way. They paid Michael Best & Friedrich and the Troupis Law Office $400,000 in taxpayer money to write those bills.
This might be another job for supervisory/original jurisdiction.
Bronson LaFollette's legacy seems to be as much his contribution to the bi-partisan heritage of occasional elected official OWIs (his being 1982 according to the google archives), as much as any legal acumen credited to him. Anyway, if that's what they want to rely on, well, that's....uh, interesting.
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