Retired Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor speaks to supporters at the Citizens Not Politicians rally, July 1, 2024, at the Statehouse in Columbus, Ohio. (Photo by Graham Stokes for Ohio Capital Journal. Republish only with original story.)
Even though Ohioans will be voting on Issue 1, which would remove politicians from the redistricting if approved, it’s possible redistricting will go before the state’s high court again.
The justices elected to the Ohio Supreme Court in 2024 will be the ones deciding on any challenges to new maps if Ohio voters pass the proposed Issue 1 anti-gerrymandering amendment this November.
Even though Ohioans will be voting on Issue 1, which would remove politicians from redistricting if approved, it’s possible redistricting will go before the state’s high court again.
“Maps, no matter who draws them, are certainly subject to challenge, and they’re subject to challenge for violating the provisions of the Ohio Constitution,”said University of Cincinnati Political Science Professor David Niven. “So we’re not done no matter what happens with Issue One. … There are still unhappy political actors who will go to the courts in some cases, questioning the process.”
Redistricting and past Supreme Court rulings
Redistricting is currently done through the Ohio Redistricting Commission — which includes the governor, the secretary of state, the state auditor and four legislative leaders (two from each party). In 2015, 71% of Ohioans voted in favor of a constitutional amendment to create a bipartisan redistricting commission to draw legislative districts in 2021.
Six different Statehouse district maps and two congressional maps have gone through the current redistricting process. The Ohio Supreme Court ruled five of the Statehouse maps unconstitutionally gerrymandered and both congressional maps were rejected as unconstitutional.
A federal court ordered Ohio voters to use the last of the gerrymandered Statehouse maps in 2022 since the commission ran out of time to come up with a constitutionally approved map. State lawmakers are currently occupying those districts.
Republican former Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor, who served on the state’s high court from 2003 to 2022, talked about this in an ad for Issue 1.
“Seven times career politicians have so blatantly gerrymandered our voting district maps that the Ohio Supreme Court ruled the maps unconstitutional. Seven times,” she said in the ad. “Issue One bans politicians from drawing voting maps. It will restore power to where it belongs, with citizens not politicians.”
Citizens Not Politicians, a nonpartisan coalition, is behind the proposed constitutional amendment. Issue 1 would create a 15-member Ohio Citizens Redistricting Commission made up of Republicans, Democratic and independent citizens. It would prohibit current or former politicians, political party officials, lobbyists and large political donors from being on the commission.
Ohio Supreme Court races
Republicans currently have a 4-3 majority on the Ohio Supreme Court. Depending on the outcome of the election, the Democrats could flip the court or the Republicans could tighten their grip.
“The makeup of the court makes a tremendous difference,” Executive Director of Common Cause Ohio Catherine Turcer said. “Are these folks that are going to serve on the court going to look at new voting districts with an eye to what’s in the Ohio Constitution and to what is actually good for Ohio voters, or are they going to be swayed by partisan interests?”
Ohio Republican lawmakers added party labels to the previously nonpartisan Ohio Supreme Court races starting in 2022.
Incumbent Democratic Justice Michael P. Donnelly is being challenged by Republican Hamilton County Court of Common Pleas Judge Megan Shanahan.
Incumbent Democratic Justice Melody Stewart is being challenged by incumbent Republican Justice Joseph Deters, who decided not to run for his current seat and instead chose to go up against Stewart.
Democratic candidate Lisa Forbes, of the Eighth District Court of Appeals, and Republican candidate Dan Hawkins, of the Franklin County Court of Common Pleas, are fighting for Deters’ open seat.
Deters recently talked briefly about redistricting on a right-wing Cleveland radio show.
“I think it’s kind of humorous to watch when the other side can’t win, they want to change the rules whether it’s hacking the U.S. Supreme Court because they don’t have the justices they like, or getting rid of the Electoral College because they don’t have a clear advantage in the Electoral College like they do, and it’s just a flat popular vote. And now redistricting,” he said on Strictly Speaking with Bob Frantz.
Megan Henry is a reporter for the Ohio Capital Journal and has spent the past five years reporting in Ohio on various topics including education, healthcare, business and crime. She previously worked at The Columbus Dispatch, part of the USA Today Network.
Ohio Capital Journal is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine stood in staunch opposition Wednesday to an anti-gerrymandering proposal heading to voters in November that would replace politicians with a citizen redistricting commission, but he stopped short of presenting a competing proposal this year.
DeWine held a press conference on Wednesday, not only to criticize the Citizens Not Politicians ballot initiative, but to acknowledge the process that’s currently in place in Ohio — a process that includes him — doesn’t work either.
“We need to end this writing and re-writing of our constitution, and we must defeat this misguided ballot initiative,” DeWine said.
Asked whether he thought it was possible the initiative headed to the ballot could work, despite his misgivings, the governor said, “No. No way in hell.”
DeWine instead presented his preference for an “Iowa plan,” where Ohio lawmakers would draw up a redistricting amendment proposal of their own early next year, based on the state of Iowa’s.
Iowa has a non-partisan legislative services agency draw maps for approval by lawmakers and the governor. If a map doesn’t get passed by the legislature and governor on its first two attempts, Iowa lawmakers are able to make amendments to the map plan as they see fit on the third attempt. This gives Iowa lawmakers final authority on maps.
In a response issued after DeWine’s news conference, Citizens Not Politicians leader and retired Republican Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor issued a statement saying that the “disinformation from the governor today is insulting to everyone in Ohio.”
Redistricting in Ohio
The governor was a member of the Ohio Redistricting Commission (as dictated by current state law regarding redistricting), so he saw firsthand the process over the two years that the commission adopted six Statehouse maps and two U.S. congressional maps.
All of the maps were challenged in court, with five of the Statehouse maps rejected by the Ohio Supreme Court, and both of the congressional maps ruled unconstitutionally partisan. The sixth map was not rejected by a state supreme court led by new Chief Justice Sharon Kennedy, rather than the previous swing vote on all the maps, now-retired Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor.
The process also saw two independent map-drawers, who were brought in at the behest of the court, but whose suggestions and draft maps were rejected by the commission at the last minute, in favor of a previous draft drawn up by Republican staffers.
“This was a decision that I have consciously made after having watched the turmoil, political partisanship that’s been going on for a long time in Ohio,” DeWine said on Wednesday as he decried the Citizens Not Politicians proposal.
The one thing DeWine said did need to happen in redistricting reform that matches up with the current ballot proposal is a removal of politics as part of the process.
“Ohio should have a constitutional provision that instructs the mapmakers that they can not consider past voting data, that the map-drawers know will lead to a pre-determined partisan outcome,” he said.
He said the proposal set to come before voters would need replaced once again after voters realized they were “unhappy,” and that the new process “will make things much worse.”
“If this ballot proposal were to be adopted, Ohio would actually end up with a system that mandates, that compels map-drawers to produce gerrymandered districts,” DeWine alleged.
The proposal headed for voters after the Ohio Ballot Board approves ballot language for it, would create a 15-person independent redistricting commission made up of citizens, and without elected officials, according to the proposal. The citizens would be chosen through a vetting process done by local judges, and public hearings would be a part of the process as maps are drafted, Citizens Not Politicians has stated.
The main problem with the proposal for DeWine is that proportionality “supersedes” all when it comes to drawing maps and determining Statehouse and congressional districts. Proportionality requires representation based on the voting trends in past elections.
The governor critiqued the initiative for having proportionality supersede things like communities of interests and township/county/municipality lines.
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine points to a proposed Ohio voting district during a Wednesday press conference. At the press conference, he spoke out against the Citizens Not Politicians redistricting reform proposal, and brought up his own plan for reform after the November election. (Photo by Susan Tebben, Ohio Capital Journal.)
Using two examples of maps drawn with the simulation software Dave’s Redistricting App — one done by “Kevin” with a proportionality score of 100 out of 100, and another officially submitted by the Ohio Democrats — he endeavored to show possible problems with maps that focus solely on proportionality.
He mentioned the “snake on the lake” — a nickname for a northeast district based on its shape — comparing it to a district in one simulation that connected Sandusky and Lorain counties. He said another district in the proposals reminded him of an ice cream cone in its “scooping” out of parts of the area.
“This is what proportionality does if you adhere to it,” he said.
DeWine’s plan
Whether or not the Citizens Not Politicians initiative goes through, Ohio might see DeWine and the legislature attempting to rewrite the constitution again.
If the initiative doesn’t pass, DeWine was resolute in his plan to “work with the General Assembly to introduce a resolution in the next session.”
“We’ll vet that proposal, there’ll be hearings on it, we’ll hear from citizens on all sides,” DeWine said. “And I hope then, approve the resolution to place an initiative on the ballot for voters to approve the way the process should be.”
He said he will ask for passage of “a version of the Iowa ballot language that’s been in effect … for about 40 years now.”
The Iowa system has gone through its share of changes, but in the 1980 legislative session, state legislators established the current process, in which the Legislative Service Bureau, “a nonpartisan bill drafting agency of the General Assembly” is given the “primary responsibility for drawing proposed congressional and legislative districts, subject to legislative and gubernatorial approval,” according to a legislative guide to the process produced by the Iowa Legislative Services Agency, a combination of agencies including the LSB.
The plan requires a first redistricting plan to be submitted to the General Assembly, after which a “Temporary Redistricting Advisory Commission” holds at least three hearings in “different geographic regions of the state,” submitting a report after the hearings.
If that map fails to be approved by the legislature or the governor, specific reasons must be given via resolution or governor’s veto message. The GA then has 35 days to get a second plan to a vote. No public hearings are required for the second plan.
If there is need for a third plan, the process repeats, but this time “the third plan is subject to amendment in the same manner as any other bill,” meaning that Iowa lawmakers can make desired changes directly.
If no agreement can be made or if that plan is legally challenged, judicial intervention from the state supreme court begins.
The Iowa Constitution “provides that the Iowa Supreme Court will likely assume or be given the responsibility for establishing a valid redistricting plan,” according to the LSA.
As DeWine explained the Iowa process, he said the Legislative Service Commission in Ohio would be the non-partisan entity to start the process, but Ohio’s version would perhaps not follow the rest of the process, including the provision that states the Iowa Legislature has the formal passage power on maps.
As for enforcement measures to keep the redistricting leaders in check under the plan he’s proposing, DeWine said “none of that changes” from the process now.
The biggest part of the system that DeWine wants to see in Ohio is the map-drawing criteria.
“The Iowa criteria makes it impossible for someone legally following the constitution to use partisan politics,” the governor said.
He acknowledged Iowa’s smaller population and more compact counties, but said the “basic principle” works in both states.
“Do you want politics in it, or do you want politics prohibited from being in it?”
If an Ohio GA plan “deviates very much” from the Iowa system, DeWine said he “will not be in favor of it.”
Even if the ballot measure does pass in November, DeWine still wouldn’t rule out the possibility that he would push for the Iowa plan to be on the ballot at a later date.
“What I’m not going to say is ‘never, never, never’ will I ever do that, I’m not going to say it,” DeWine said. “What I hope happens is that we can defeat this in the fall … and I will push and I will do whatever I can to lead so that we end up with something that’s better than what we have now.”
He went further, saying even if the legislature does not bring about the plan he envisions, “I will do everything I can to get it on the ballot by initiative.”
Despite his fervor for the plan, DeWine said he would not be calling a special session for the legislature to work on the initiative now, to try to beat the Aug. 7 petition-filing date.
“I don’t have time to go to the ballot, number one; number two, I don’t know that at this late date if there’s support in the House to do that; three, the advantage that you have by waiting …is that we can go through a normal process where there are public hearings and things can be vetted,” DeWine told reporters on Wednesday.
The governor alleged that the Citizens Not Politicians amendment had not been properly vetted, saying if voters understood the proposal, they wouldn’t want it, even if they support proportionality as a lead method in redistricting. The proposal made the ballot with 535,005 valid Ohio voter signatures.
“The idea of proportionality sounds good, it sounds fair,” DeWine said. “However, we see how requiring a map-drawer to draw districts, each of which favors one political party … obliterates all other good government objectives.”
Reactions
The Citizens Not Politicians leaders were unsurprisingly against DeWine’s comments and his new plan.
“The disinformation from the governor today is insulting to everyone in Ohio, and especially insulting to the half-a-million Ohioans – Republicans, Democrats and Independents – who put the Citizens Not Politicians amendment on the November ballot,” said retired Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor, in a statement with Citizens Not Politicians.
O’Connor offered to sit down with the governor and “explain” the plan since, she said, “the governor demonstrated in his rambling and disjointed press conference today that he does not understand our amendment.”
Senate Minority Leader Nickie Antonio, D-Lakewood, who was on the Ohio Redistricting Commission with DeWine when they passed the most recent statehouse district map, said the governor’s proposal “appears to be another eleventh-hour attempt to subvert the will of the people and keep a stranglehold on the GOP artificial supermajority.”
House Minority Leader Allison Russo, D-Upper Arlington, also served on the commission with DeWine through a number of maps, and commented after the most recent map adoption that she agreed to the map solely to take the process out of the hands of the ORC.
On Wednesday, she called the DeWine’s press conference a “manufactured attempt to confuse and misdirect voters from the truth.”
“Republicans are desperate because they know their gerrymandered grip on power is coming to an end, so they’re once again attacking Ohioans’ fundamental freedoms and putting their own self-interest ahead of the interest of the people,” Russo said in a statement.
The governor wasn’t without his supporters in the effort, however. A spokesperson for Senate President Matt Huffman said the governor “is correct about proportionality, also known as ‘representational fairness,’ it is the textbook definition of gerrymandering.”
“It’s important to remember that the current system, approved by more than 70% of the voters, produced a unanimous bipartisan vote that approved maps for the General Assembly over the remainder of the decade,” spokesperson John Fortney said.
House Speaker Jason Stephens posted a statement on X after DeWine’s press conference, saying “I look forward to working with the governor, the Senate and the entire GOP Caucus to defeat Issue 1 in November.”
“Once Issue 1 is defeated, we will continue to work to ensure all Ohioans voices are heard and represented,” the statement read.
Susan Tebben
Susan Tebben is an award-winning journalist with a decade of experience covering Ohio news, including courts and crime, Appalachian social issues, government, education, diversity and culture. She has worked for The Newark Advocate, The Glasgow (KY) Daily Times, The Athens Messenger, and WOUB Public Media. She has also had work featured on National Public Radio.
Ohio Capital Journal is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.
Reporting more than 731,000 signatures submitted to the Ohio Secretary of State’s Office, Citizens Not Politicians said it cleared a massive hurdle in their plan to reform the state’s redistricting process by replacing politicians with a citizen commission.
The group hoping to get a citizen-led redistricting commission inserted as an amendment to the Ohio Constitution was required to collect 413,487 signatures by July 3 in order to qualify for the Nov. 5 general election. That number accounts for 10% of the total votes cast in the last gubernatorial election, a threshold state law requires for ballot initiatives.
Ohio also requires petitions to receive at least 5% of the vote in at least 44 counties. Citizens Not Politicians said it did this in 57 counties, while also collecting signatures in all 88 counties in the state.
During a rally celebrating the submission of the signatures on Monday, retired Republican Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor told a crowd of hundreds in the Statehouse atrium that the initiative received the third highest signature total the state has seen in more than a century. She said it was “one of the most widely supported citizen-initiated constitutional amendments in Ohio’s history.”
“Ladies and gentlemen, let me let you in on a little secret,” she told supporters who attended the rally. “This amendment will pass. We will prevail.”
The signatures will now be verified by the Secretary of State’s Office, to filter out possible duplicate or invalid voter signatures, before a final count will be released.
O’Connor joined in on the redistricting reform process after being chief justice of a supreme court that rejected six different maps adopted by the Ohio Redistricting Commission, a commission made up of elected officials.
The current seven-member Ohio Redistricting Commission includes the Ohio House Speaker and Ohio Senate President, along with the governor, secretary of state, auditor of state, and two minority party legislative leaders. If approved by the voters, the amendment would replace the politician commission with the Ohio Citizens Redistricting Commission, which would have 15 members, five matching the political party of the governor at the time, five from the party of the gubernatorial candidate who received the second-most votes in the most recent election, and five unaffiliated members.
The most recent map adopted by the current redistricting commission was cleared by the state’s highest court after O’Connor left due to age limits, and the head chair was taken up by Republican Chief Justice Sharon Kennedy.
The rally and the reason for it brought out all sorts, from education and nurses association members to bricklayers and religious leaders.
Maria Montanez is a part of the Ohio Organizing Collaborative’s Building Freedom Ohio, which works with residents who have been a part of the criminal justice system.
Montanez said she is a convicted felon, but one who served her time while also obtaining a Bachelor’s degree in business administration.
“When I got out of prison, I wasn’t given a fair chance,” Montanez said. “Even though I came out with an accolade and prepared myself to be a productive citizen within the community, I’m still looked at as a felon.”
She wants to see changes to collateral sanctions in Ohio, and thinks making changes to voting rules and making voting districts representative can help make that happen.
“There’s plenty of people that look like me, feel like me and are living the same civil debt that I am living today,” she said.
For Cleveland-area school nurse David Spanos, changing the way redistricting is done could help bring more funding to public schools, and lift fair partisan representation into reality, rather than map manipulations meant to help incumbents hold on to power.
“I don’t think Ohio would be a Republican state if it weren’t for gerrymandering,” Spanos said.
Cincinnati resident and salon owner Desirae Futel works hard to help her customers learn where and when to vote, and what their voice means when it comes to change in politics.
“Gerrymandering has long silenced communities like mine, but today, we stand to change that,” she told the crowd.
With the signatures now submitted, the campaign to get voters to the ballot in support of the measure begins. That strategy includes battling against those who oppose the new redistricting plan, according to O’Connor.
“They’re going to scheme and spread disinformation, and try and muddy the waters and confuse the voters,” she said.
But if the motivation encapsulated in the Statehouse atrium spreads to the rest of Ohio voters, Montanez said the votes will go their way.
“It’s in the numbers that we move this, it’s in the capacity, it’s not just one person,” she said.
SUSAN TEBBEN
Susan Tebben is an award-winning journalist with a decade of experience covering Ohio news, including courts and crime, Appalachian social issues, government, education, diversity and culture. She has worked for The Newark Advocate, The Glasgow (KY) Daily Times, The Athens Messenger, and WOUB Public Media. She has also had work featured on National Public Radio.
Ohio Capital Journal is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.
The members of the Ohio Redistricting Commission are sworn in by Gov. Mike DeWine on Wednesday. Left to right: State Rep. Jeff LaRe, Secretary of State Frank LaRose, Auditor of State Keith FSUSAN TEBBENaber, DeWine, Senate Majority Floor Leader Rob McColley, House Minority Leader Allison Russo and Senate Minority Leader Nickie Antonio. (Photo by Susan Tebben, OCJ.)
Signature collection continues for an anti-gerrymandering ballot measure in Ohio that would replace politicians on the redistricting commission with citizens. As the July deadline approaches, supporters are pointing to a new study showing how uncompetitive Statehouse races are.
The Brennan Center for Justice at NYU’s law school analyzed Ohio’s current maps alongside the results of the most recent primary election.
Authors of the study said the data “reveals one of the tangible ways Ohio’s gerrymandered maps undermine electoral competition, and how the districts leave millions of Ohio voters without a significant voice in the Ohio House elections slated for this November.”
“An overwhelming majority of Ohioans will cast ballots this November in legislative districts that were drawn to lock in general election outcomes, and few districts featured meaningful primary contests,” the Brennan Center report stated. “These are the predictable consequences of living in a gerrymandered state.”
One of the authors of the report, released Tuesday, is Yurij Rudensky, who spoke in support of the new ballot initiative proposed to hit voters in November. If it gets on the ballot and is passed by voters, the reforms would replace the current Ohio Redistricting Commission made up of elected officials with a citizen-run, judge-vetted commission to draw the next Statehouse and U.S. Congressional maps.
Rudensky spoke in a March panel, alongside former Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor and others, about the difference between the reforms passed in 2015 and 2018 and the proposed amendment that voters may see on their general election ballots.
At the March panel discussion, Rudensky hesitated to call the last two measures reforms because he argued no changes were made and the previous amendments merely demonstrated that “political insiders have no business being in the process.”
Since those amendments passed — reforms made through legislative negotiation before hitting the voters — the Ohio Redistricting Commission has been built on a Republican majority, with Gov. Mike DeWine, Senate President Matt Huffman, former House Speaker Bob Cupp, Secretary of State Frank LaRose and Auditor of State Keith Faber all standing on the commission during some or all of the proceedings over the two years it took for the group to pass six Statehouse maps and two congressional maps. State Rep. Jeff LaRe, R-Violet Twp., replaced Cupp and state Sen. Rob McColley, R-Napoleon, came in for Huffman toward the end of the two-year span.
The Statehouse maps were declared unconstitutionally gerrymandered five times by a bipartisan majority on the Ohio Supreme Court, but voters were forced by federal judges to use them for the 2022 Election.
In analyzing the current Ohio Statehouse maps, Rudensky and co-author Gina Feliz concluded that about 77% of the state’s population live in “districts where elections for state representatives are not in serious dispute.”
“That is, these districts are either uncontested, or they give one party a disproportionate advantage in the general election so that the district is uncompetitive, even if it’s formally contested,” the researchers wrote.
The report defines “uncompetitive” as districts where the partisan draw favors one party by 55% or more.
Source: Brennan Center analysis of Ohio Secretary of State’s Office Unofficial 2024 Primary Election Results.
Nearly half of the districts in the Ohio House didn’t have a primary contest in March to drive a November general election race, the Brennan Center research found, citing data from the Ohio Secretary of State.
“In all, there are 15 districts (out of 99 total) that will give voters no choice between Democratic and Republican candidates for state representative,” according to the study.
The report also recognized the low turnout in the state during the primary season, with an average of 18.8% of registered voters casting ballots in districts with competitive primaries.
Because of that, Rudensky and Feliz counted fewer than 450,000 voters who “all but decided who would serve as state representatives on behalf of more than 2.3 million registered voters and 3.5 million constituents.”
The report pointed to the proposed ballot initiative led by Citizens Not Politicians as a redistricting reform that could “center community needs and voter preferences rather than the interests of incumbents.”
Looking to a future that may have an independent redistricting commission, the voting rights group Common Cause put out its own report, a summary of a 2023 conference where members reflected on states who already have such a system in place, and those like Ohio that could see the change come in November.
“Unsurprisingly, all those who attended the conference believed in the possibilities of fair and representative maps and that independent redistricting commissions were the best strategy to achieve this goal,” Common Cause stated in the new report.
The “Roadmap for Fair Maps in 2030,” a summary of the 2023 National Citizen Redistricting Commissioners Conference, talked about the need to make redistricting a transparent process that is “responsive to community needs.” At the conference, the report said a “model commission” was organized for Ohio and neighbor state Indiana “to demonstrate how an alternative process based on community input and transparency can work.”
In a previous report, released shortly after the Ohio Redistricting Commission adopted the current Statehouse district maps, Common Cause gave the state a failing grade, calling the current map-drawing process and the results that came from it “unmitigated disasters.”
Ideally in redistricting, Common Cause members said the process should “ensure that commissions reflect the diversity of the jurisdiction” and engage community-based organizations and leaders to build resident trust and hold commissions accountable.
What should not be included in the process, according to the report, are legislature-appointed commissioners or any legislative role in the mapping process.
“Commission decisions on maps should be final, except for judicial review, with no approval from elected officials required,” the report stated.
The Citizens Not Politicians initiative was supported in the report as part of strategies to “increase fair representation in 2030,” the next time the process is set to start, though maps in Ohio would need to be redrawn in 2025 if the ballot measure passes in November.
Opposition to the initiative has been led by Huffman, who helped formulate the previous redistricting reforms. In an Ohio Chamber of Commerce event following the March primaries, he laid out his arguments against the initiative, saying litigation would pile up with the proposed system, and that “when allowed to work,” the current system did its job.
In order for the measure to appear on Ohio ballots in the general election, supporters must collect 413,487 valid state voter signatures by July 3.
SUSAN TEBBEN
Susan Tebben is an award-winning journalist with a decade of experience covering Ohio news, including courts and crime, Appalachian social issues, government, education, diversity and culture. She has worked for The Newark Advocate, The Glasgow (KY) Daily Times, The Athens Messenger, and WOUB Public Media. She has also had work featured on National Public Radio.
Ohio Capital Journal is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.
The Republican members of the Ohio Redistricting Commission talk before a 2023 public hearing on Statehouse district maps. (Photo by Susan Tebben, Ohio Capital Journal.)
Business leaders from Ohio are standing in support of a proposed constitutional amendment that would change the way redistricting occurs in the state by removing politicians from the process in favor of a citizen commission.
“One crucial aspect of ensuring a robust representative democracy are legislative districts that ensure fair representation of the voting population,” an open letter from 67 Ohio business leaders stated. “The sad reality in Ohio is that political leaders of both parties have abused the system.”
The letter was released via the Leadership Now Project, a national group of business leaders, and organized by a senior advisor to the project, Ohio Business Roundtable co-founder Richard Stoff.
“Extreme gerrymandering reflects poorly on this great state of ours,” Stoff said in a statement announcing the letter, in conjunction with Citizens Not Politicians, the group leading the effort to get redistricting reform on the ballot.
Citizens Not Policians is working to get a proposed constitutional amendment on the November 2024 ballot that would eliminate the Ohio Redistricting Commission as it stands now, made up of seven elected officials including the Ohio governor, secretary of state, and auditor, as well as one Republican and one Democratic lawmaker from both the Ohio House and Ohio Senate.
Instead, if the amendment is approved by voters, a 15-member commission made up of public citizens would be empaneled to choose Ohio Statehouse and U.S. congressional voting districts.
The newest constitutional amendment on redistricting would “empower a truly independent citizen-led process to draw congressional and state legislative maps,” according to the letter.
“Building on successful best practices from other states, the Ohio proposal would ban gerrymandering, prohibit consideration of individual incumbents or candidates when drawing maps, and ensure an open and transparent redistricting process with extensive and meaningful public input,” the business leaders wrote.
As of Wednesday, individuals who signed the letter included former CEOs and leaders from the banking, energy, insurance, retail, small business and academic worlds. Recognizable names like Dr. Amy Acton, Jeni Britton, and Yvette McGee Brown appear alongside Doug Ulman of Pelotonia, former Procter & Gamble chair and CEO John Pepper, and Robert Schottenstein, chairman and CEO of M/I Homes.
Citizens Not Politicians and supporters of the proposed amendment are currently collecting signatures to bring the measure to the ballot box. The deadline to collect signatures for the 2024 General Election ballot is July 3.
SUSAN TEBBEN
Susan Tebben is an award-winning journalist with a decade of experience covering Ohio news, including courts and crime, Appalachian social issues, government, education, diversity and culture. She has worked for The Newark Advocate, The Glasgow (KY) Daily Times, The Athens Messenger, and WOUB Public Media. She has also had work featured on National Public Radio.
The newest measure to change the Ohio Constitution and reform the redistricting process in Ohio has cleared its most recent hurdle: a typo.
The Ohio Ballot Board met Monday, quickly certifying a proposed constitutional amendment that would “replace the current politician-run redistricting process.” The board’s only role is to determine if an amendment follows the legal requirements that the measure only contain one amendment to the state’s constitution.
The certification came as no surprise, since the board had previously certified the amendment in October. This time around, the re-certification was needed after the creator of the proposed amendment, anti-gerrymandering group Citizens Not Politicians, noticed a typo in one of the deadlines mentioned in the amendment.
Attorney Don McTigue was present at Monday’s ballot board meeting, and said that nothing about the intent of the amendment changes with the correction of the error.
The amendment also went through multiple rounds of revisions, after Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost rejected the measure twice, saying amendment reviewers identified “omissions and misstatements” that the AG said would “mislead a potential signer as to the actual scope and effect of the proposed amendment.”
The amendment would replace the current redistricting process, also created through a constitutional amendment, and would eliminate the Ohio Redistricting Commission as it stands now, a seven-member panel made up of all elected officials, five from the GOP majority and two Democrats.
The commission would be replaced with a “citizen-led commission,” chosen by a bipartisan panel. If approved by the voters, the amendment would create the Ohio Citizens Redistricting Commission, which would have 15 members, five matching the political party of the governor at the time, five from the party of the gubernatorial candidate who received the second-most votes in the most recent election, and five unaffiliated members.
The statehouse districts adopted in September by the current commission are being challenged in a case before the state’s highest court, but no decision has been made.
The ORC has been rife with chaos and uncertainty as well, as the last two years contained multiple line-up changes, arguments over deadlines and lack of action, and even a stumbled start to the most recent adoption process.
In the new amendment proposal, the citizen-led commission would have to create a redistricting plan with political party proportions that “correspond closely to statewide partisan preferences of the voters of Ohio,” and the commission has to state how the districts’ partisan divide was determined.
The group who wrote the measure defines “correspond closely” as no more than a 3-percentage-point difference between the redistricting plans and the statewide voter preferences, “unless arithmetically impossible.”
The Ohio Supreme Court holds the jurisdiction for all court challenges of redistricting plans in the amendment, just as it does in the current system. That system was criticized, however, for not creating enough of an enforcement mechanism. The state supreme court rejected seven different district maps, but did not hold commission members in contempt for missing deadlines.
The commission also did not receive any consequences for eschewing a proposal from court-ordered mapmakers, brought in on the taxpayers’ dime, and passing a map that was nearly identical to a previous, unconstitutional statehouse map.
In the new process, if approved by voters, “special masters” would be chosen to “review the record before the commission and hold a public hearing” if a court challenged is filed against a redistricting plan. Then, a report must be issued “as to whether the commission abused its discretion in its determination that the adopted plan complies with the partisan fairness criteria required by the amendment for a redistricting plan.”
Once the report from the special masters is released, objections to the report can be filed with the Ohio Supreme Court, who will ultimately rule on the maps.
The commission would have an appropriation from the Ohio General Assembly of $7 million for 2025 redistricting under the new measure, plus more for the bipartisan panel who chooses the commission.
The cost of the special masters would come from the Ohio Supreme Court’s budget, according to the amendment language.
Signature collection for the initiative can begin again, now that the state ballot board has re-approved the measure. According to Citizens Not Politicians, the group must collect 413,487 valid Ohio voter signatures by July 3, 2024, to qualify for the general election next year.
SUSAN TEBBEN
Susan Tebben is an award-winning journalist with a decade of experience covering Ohio news, including courts and crime, Appalachian social issues, government, education, diversity and culture. She has worked for The Newark Advocate, The Glasgow (KY) Daily Times, The Athens Messenger, and WOUB Public Media. She has also had work featured on National Public Radio.
It should be abundantly clear to all fair-minded Ohioans at this point that politicians have no business being involved in the redistricting process after lawmakers used the latest round of Ohio House and Senate district mapmaking to strike a bipartisan deal that amounts to little more than gerrymandered horse-trading.
Fittingly under the cover of darkness late Tuesday night, Ohio Republican and Democratic politicians conducted a shrewd, self-serving negotiation to once again gerrymander Ohio’s Statehouse maps in behalf of their own short-term political power interests, instead of all working earnestly toward fair, representative maps.
Ohio Democratic commissioners had a choice of whether to get whatever they could for now and hope voters pass reform, or to get raked by Republicans on the commission with worse maps than we have now, but this time likely destined to be rubber-stamped by a partisan right-wing Ohio Supreme Court. They chose the former.
The Ohio Redistricting Commission’s bipartisan agreement among politicians show a Republican advantage of 61 to 38 in the Ohio House under the new map, with eight competitive Democratic toss-up seats and three competitive GOP toss-ups.
In the Ohio Senate, the new map shows a 23 to 10 Republican advantage, with three competitive Republican toss-up seats and one competitive Democratic toss-up seat.
Compare this to Ohio’s current unconstitutionally gerrymandered maps forced upon voters in 2022. Before the 2022 Election, the current gerrymandered districts showed a Republican advantage in 56 House seats. In the Ohio House, all 19 competitive districts under the current maps were Democratic, with zero competitive Republican districts.
That meant that Democrats had to spend money and resources in 19 House districts and win every single one in order to maximize their House seats. Republicans didn’t have to “defend” a single seat, and could focus all of their money and resources on “pick-ups” — taking seats that lean Democratic on-paper.
The Republicans’ unconstitutionally partisan mapmaking paid off. The 2022 Election saw Ohio Republicans winning 67 state House seats.
In the Ohio Senate under the current maps, Republicans before the election looked to hold an edge in 18 Senate seats, and there were seven competitive toss-ups. Republicans ended up winning 26 Senate seats last November, while Democrats won seven seats total.
So what are we looking at here with Tuesday night’s agreement among the bipartisan politicians?
Democrats don’t have to spend the money and resources to defend nearly as many seats in the Ohio House. Instead of defending 19 seats, they will be defending eight seats and targeting three GOP seats. Essentially, their political resource management and allocation will be easier. Same thing in the Senate. They will be able to focus their resources on attempting to defend one seat and to pick up three GOP seats.
Best case scenario for Democrats under the new maps: They pick-up six Senate seats total over their current number of seven, for a 20-13 Republican chamber; and/or they pick up nine seats total in the Ohio House over their current 32 seats by protecting their eight competitive seats and winning three GOP-leaning targets, for a 58-41 Republican chamber.
That best case scenario for Democrats would break the GOP’s supermajorities; however, if Democrats were to not win the competitive Republican-leaning seats, the GOP would retain supermajorities of 61-38 in the Ohio House and 23-10 in the Ohio Senate.
The best case scenario for Republicans would be not only to hold on to their supermajorities, but to win as many competitive Democratic-leaning districts as possible. If they were to defend their three competitive seats and win six out of the eight Dem-leaning competitive districts in the House, for instance, they would retain their current 67-32 advantage. Keep in mind that in 2022, they won 11 Dem-leaning competitive House seats.
So by striking this deal on more gerrymandered maps, Democratic politicians gave themselves an easier time with money and resource allocation in 2024 and a very difficult but still possible shot to take away GOP supermajorities, and the GOP gave themselves a good chance to retain their supermajorities in both chambers while still having the opportunity to possibly expand them even further than the maps suggest now on-paper.
But there’s more.
Beyond this gerrymandered horse-trading on the Ohio House and Senate numbers, Democrats are indicating they are putting faith in the idea that the impact of gerrymandering lessens over time as the data used to draw the maps become outdated — so this deal prevents the GOP from both punishing Democrats severely right now, and from coming back for another redraw with fresh data to more efficiently gerrymander the maps again. Democrats also advocated Tuesday night for 2024 anti-gerrymandering reform, indicating they see this deal as a stop-gap measure before real reforms can take place thanks to voters.
Republicans meanwhile have obtained a strong political cudgel to wield against that very effort to replace the Ohio Redistricting Commission made up of politicians with an Ohio Citizens Redistricting Commission that kicks the politicians out of the process. Republicans will say that the process worked, they obtained bipartisan agreement just as voters in 2015 intended with redistricting reform, that these maps are not gerrymandered, and in 2024, they’ll say something along the lines of, “Far-left special interests want to hijack the constitution and put power in the hands of unelected bureaucrats.”
This process did not work.
Redistricting in Ohio has been a two-year travesty with an ignominious conclusion for everyone involved, Republican and Democratic politicians alike.
The prevailing motivation of every politician Tuesday night was shrewd political self-interest, not sacred obligation and duty to the public.
No matter what anybody thinks of the advantages or disadvantages of the deal that was struck, it’s clear that these incentives for political horse-trading must be removed.
The only incentive for mapmakers should be fair and representative maps that evenly maximize competitiveness.
The way to remove these bad incentives to make these kind of damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t deals is to kick all of these politicians out of the process.
Whether it’s partisan or bipartisan, gerrymandering must end. On Tuesday night in Ohio, it did not.
DAVID DEWITT
Ohio Capital Journal Editor-in-Chief and Columnist David DeWitt has been covering government, politics, and policy in Ohio since 2007, including education, health care, crime and courts, poverty, state and local government, business, labor, energy, environment, and social issues. He has worked for the National Journal, The New York Observer, The Athens NEWS, and Plunderbund.com. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Ohio University’s E.W. Scripps School of Journalism and is a board member of the E.W. Scripps Society of Alumni and Friends. He can be found on Twitter @DC_DeWitt
The Ohio Redistricting Commission will meet on Wednesday for the first time since May 2022 to discuss Ohio Statehouse voting districts.
After well over a year of inaction, and five different Ohio Supreme Court rejections, the commission comes back to work with heavy criticism of previous maps, and a mixed amount of optimism among anti-gerrymandering advocates that things will change.
“Even though activists from across the state wrote letters, attended, called (senators and representatives) … we know that those calls to do something different largely fell on deaf ears,” said Petee Talley, head of the Ohio Coalition on Black Civic Participation, of previous efforts to comment on district maps.
Court cases out of states like Alabama and Florida showed courts on all levels, including the U.S. Supreme Court, did not agree that racial demographics should be shoved to the side when debating voting districts.
Groups like Talley’s OCBCP, the NAACP of Ohio and the Ohio Organizing Collaborative said in a recent press call they were happy to see the rulings after Ohio mapmakers admitted they were instructed by legislative leaders not to include demographic data in Statehouse maps.
“We are hopeful that we have a vote in the next drawing in what these districts look like so that we can get the representation that we need,” Talley said on the call.
But in expressing doubts about the process considering the elected officials on the redistricting commission, Tom Roberts, a former state senator and the current president of the NAACP’s Ohio chapter, cited Secretary of State Frank LaRose’s recent letter expressing the need for maps to be passed by the end of September in order to be used in the November 2024 general election.
“This just tells me that they have no interest in drawing fair maps, they have no interest in doing the right thing,” Roberts said.
The former elected official said he’s “not optimistic” that the ORC will do “any more than they did the last time.”
The only way to get to fair maps, Roberts said, is to remove elected leaders from the commission and make it a citizen-run body. That concept has been brought up in the form of a proposed constitutional amendment for the ballot in 2024 attempting to revise the redistricting process yet again by replacing the politicians on the Ohio Resdistricting Commission with an Ohio Citizens Redistricting Commission.
The amendment had a set back as language for the proposal was rejected by the Ohio Attorney General’s office, but amendment advocates have since resubmitted language for reconsideration.
The idea of changing the way legislative and congressional maps are drawn was put to legislators in a recent Gongwer-Werth poll, where 100% of Democratic legislators polled said changes should be made, and 71% of Republican participants disagreed. Only 18% of the GOP legislators surveyed said there should be changes, with 12% undecided.
Of 51 legislators polled, 61% said lawmakers should continue to serve on the redistricting body. The partisan split was significant, however, with 88% of Democrats in the survey saying no lawmakers should acts as map adopters as 12% undecided, and 91% of Republicans landing on the side of lawmaker-led redistricting, with 6% against it and 3% undecided.
Unanimously, Democratic participants said the governor should not be a member of the commission, but 76% of GOP survey-takers saying the leader of the executive branch should be a part of the map drawing process.
Republicans were split when asked if a more competitive district map could be drawn in Ohio, with 45% of those participating saying there could be a more competitive map, and 42% of the GOP members surveyed saying it couldn’t be done.
Unsurprisingly, all Democratic participants said more competitive districts were possible.
Ohio’s U.S. Congressional district map won’t see a change until after the 2024 election, as court cases challenging the map declared unconstitutional by a bipartisan majority on the previous Ohio Supreme Court were dismissed by the current Ohio Supreme Court at the request of map challengers.
With a map draw set to happen after 2024 either way, challengers said they decided that continuing the case would only add confusion and another state of “limbo” for voters as a general election with hot-button issues approaches.
SUSAN TEBBEN
Susan Tebben is an award-winning journalist with a decade of experience covering Ohio news, including courts and crime, Appalachian social issues, government, education, diversity and culture. She has worked for The Newark Advocate, The Glasgow (KY) Daily Times, The Athens Messenger, and WOUB Public Media. She has also had work featured on National Public Radio.
In an expected move, the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday sent back an Ohio congressional redistricting appeal for reconsideration by the state’s highest court.
Following its decision in Moore v. Harper, in which a majority of the court rejected the concept of the independent state legislature theory, the court entered a short order regarding the Ohio case, directing the state supreme court to reconsider the case “in light of Moore v. Harper.”
The Moore v. Harper decision essentially rejected all of the arguments attorneys for Huffman and GOP leadership made for legislative authority over district maps.
Using a very old and often rejected legal theory, arguments were made in the North Carolina case that a state legislature holds power over the administration of elections, therefore rise above the scrutiny of the judicial system when setting voting districts.
SCOTUS Chief Justice John Roberts said the Elections Clause of the U.S. Constitution “does not insulate state legislatures” from judicial review.
But the Ohio case, listed under the lead parties Senate President Matt Huffman and district map challenger Meryl Neiman, is headed back to a state supreme court with a new chief justice, one who led the dissent in each of the court’s rejections of congressional (and, for that matter, statehouse) redistricting maps, leading to the appeal sent to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Chief Justice Sharon Kennedy would have upheld the very first map presented to the court nearly two years ago, and every map thereafter.
Freda Levenson, legal director for the ACLU of Ohio said Friday that if Moore v. Harper is applied correctly by the Ohio Supreme Court, the court would uphold its previous decision, rejecting the current congressional maps.
“What SCOTUS said in Moore was that legislatures must follow their state constitutions — consistent with what the Ohio Supreme Court already decided,” Levenson said.
Before the court made either decision regarding redistricting, Huffman told reporters it “may simply be that we have the same congressional districts for the 2024 race as the one we have now.”
Regarding the SCOTUS decision, Huffman released a statement on Friday praising the court’s move, and saying the appeal “clearly recognized serious constitutional concerns with the narrow majority opinions rendered under the former Chief Justice.
“We are reviewing the U.S. Supreme Court’s message to determine the path forward,” Huffman said in a statement.
The Ohio Redistricting Commission would need to be reconvened by Gov. Mike DeWine, but a spokesperson for the governor suggested that won’t happen until after the state budget is finalized.
Also of note is DeWine’s son, Pat DeWine, who is a sitting justice on the supreme court. Pat DeWine has recused himself from previous cases in which the court considered contempt proceedings on ORC members (including DeWine) for missing redistricting deadlines, but has not recused himself from general redistricting lawsuits coming before the state supreme court.
SUSAN TEBBEN
Susan Tebben is an award-winning journalist with a decade of experience covering Ohio news, including courts and crime, Appalachian social issues, government, education, diversity and culture. She has worked for The Newark Advocate, The Glasgow (KY) Daily Times, The Athens Messenger, and WOUB Public Media. She has also had work featured on National Public Radio.
The new year could include many different developments in the redistricting arena, but one thing is for sure: new maps have to be on the agenda.
But this time around, majority leaders may not have as much trouble getting maps through the current approving authority: The Ohio Supreme Court.
With the departure of Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor due to age limits, Justice Sharon Kennedy was elected to take the top spot, and Kennedy made clear how she felt about redistricting in the past, accusing the court majority of judicial overreach in rejecting maps as unconstitutional.
The maps have gone through the ringer: Statehouse district maps have been rejected by the state’s highest court five times, and congressional maps have been turned down twice.
After the last round of rejection, GOP members of the Ohio Redistricting Commission turned to a federal U.S. District Court for an answer, which came in the form of the temporary approval of a map passed in February, but still deemed unconstitutional by the state supreme court.
The three-judge panel in federal court said they did not intend for the map to last ten years, or even the four years laid out in the constitutional amendment that reformed the process. The ORC could pass a map without bipartisan support, but the map would only last four years.
The GOP took another step around the Ohio Supreme Court, by appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court on congressional redistricting, and the power of the state legislature over the state supreme court.
The nation’s highest court has not yet decided whether it will take up the case, and is still deciding a different redistricting-related case, Moore v. Harper, which also addresses the role of the state legislature in elections.
U.S Sen. Sherrod Brown pointed to ousted Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder’s corruption scandal as part of the problem the state is having in attempting to resolve the redistricting issue.
“This state government is the most corrupt in the country,” Brown said on a press call. “I think there’s no question about that.”
Householder wasn’t a part of redistricting, but his predecessor as Speaker, Bob Cupp was, along with Senate President Matt Huffman.
“Of course, (GOP members of the legislature) know they’re losing elections all over the country based on the fact that they are out of step with the majority of voters, so they believe the only way to win is change the rules,” Brown said.
Legislative leaders have not made any indication for sure as to when the process will start again, though the need to pass a new state budget may slow the process down.
Voting advocates have said they are pulling together a new ballot measure, that could change redistricting yet again. Outgoing Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor has said she plans to help anti-gerrymandering efforts.
