More choices needed at ballot box

Election day is now less than a month away, but once again voters in Wisconsin will find themselves with few choices when they head to the polls. In fact, in many cases, they will have just one choice…the incumbent. All 99 Wisconsin Assembly seats are up for election in November. But 17 of those seats are held by incumbents who don’t have a single opponent. In the Wisconsin Senate, only half of the 16 seats up for election have an opponent to the incumbent to give voters more than once choice. That is deplorable for our democracy, but it is no accident. Lawmakers who currently hold office in Madison worked hard to make sure that they can coast to re-election. The political boundaries, created by Wisconsin’s legislative Republicans in 2011, were fixed to make them safe for republican office holders. They drew the boundaries to stack each district with as many like-minded voters as they could to ensure their candidates won re-election. That is pretty easy when voters have no choice on election day. The next Wisconsin Legislature should come up with legislative districts which allow more candidates to have a fair shot at winning, giving voters a real choice in the ballot box. Because otherwise, what is the point of even having an election?