Ohio advocates believe lawmakers can finally be held accountable when an anti-gerrymandering constitutional amendment is voted on in November. It’s no wonder politicians who exploit the redistricting process don’t want to lose that power.
Ohio could look very different in the coming years.
“It was an incredible feeling to know we got on the ballot,” said Jen Miller of the League of Women Voters. “This is about everyday people in Ohio taking back their power.”
Miller is a member of Citizens Not Politicians, a coalition of about 100 organizations, from labor unions to religious groups, and 70 business leaders of varying political persuasions who share the goal of preventing gerrymandering.
She has been advocating for redistricting reform for about a decade. Late Tuesday afternoon, she received word that the CNP’s anti-gerrymandering amendment had collected enough signatures to go to voters on the November ballot.
“When politicians and lobbyists manipulate maps, it hurts every voter in Ohio and our democracy,” she added.
The Ohio Secretary of State’s office certified 535,005 signatures for the initiative, even though only 413,487 were needed to get on the ballot. The office also reported that the initiative received signatures from 58 of 88 counties and at least 5% of all votes cast for governor in the last gubernatorial election. Ohio law requires the measure to have signatures in at least 44 counties.
Today, Ohio lawmakers are creating those maps — ones that directly affect them and their colleagues.
The Ohio Redistricting Commission (ORC) is made up of seven seats. Two will always be assigned to Republicans and two to Democrats in the Statehouse. The remaining three seats include the governor, secretary of state, and auditor.
The proposal calls for the creation of a 15-member Ohio Citizens Redistricting Commission (OCRC), which would include Republicans, Democrats and independents representing different geographic areas and demographic groups of the state.
The law prohibits current and former politicians, party activists, lobbyists and major political donors from serving on the commission.
It requires fair and impartial districts, making it unconstitutional to create districts that discriminate against or favor any political party or particular politician. It also requires the commission to operate in an open and independent process.
For months, Senate President Matt Huffman (R-Lima) has been a vocal opponent of redistricting reform. In a June questioning, Huffman said Ohioans would have no recourse if a citizens’ commission drew problematic maps.
“I believe that the people making such important decisions should be elected officials who are accountable to the public, not unknown bureaucrats somewhere out there,” the president said.
He believes that with the changes the amendment will make to the law, gerrymandering will become easier.
“It removes restrictions on the division of local communities, interest communities, cities, counties and municipalities, ensuring compact districts,” he added.
There are guidelines for each of these issues, but there is no free-for-all, Miller said.
During an event after the Ohio Chamber of Commerce primary, Huffman argued it would be detrimental to the state, saying a modern lawsuit would trigger an “extraordinary” number of legal challenges.
“When we were allowed to work in the summer of 2023, [the redistricting process] “It worked,” he said in March.
Huffman spokesman John Fortney echoed that sentiment Wednesday.
“This campaign should be called political results over people. It is designed to gerrymander guaranteed political victories for the progressive left without any accountability to the 70%+ voters who approved the current system that generated a unanimous bipartisan set of maps for the General Assembly,” Fortney said.
Miller and other defenders have regularly pointed out that Huffman has faced criticism from the bipartisan Ohio Supreme Court, which has invalidated his maps seven times, ordering him to stop gerrymandering to aid Republicans.
Former Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor, a Republican, has vowed to fix what she calls a broken system, becoming a frontrunner in the fight against gerrymandering in 2022.
Due to age restrictions at the court, her term ended at the end of 2022, but she said in August 2023 that she would continue to work non-stop.
“What have I been doing since I retired?” O’Connor told us. “If I had to pick a title, it would be redistricting, redistricting, redistricting.”
He is currently the face of the CNP movement.
“Republicans were interested in getting a supermajority, keeping a supermajority,” she said. “Those are considerations that are antithetical to fair maps.”
But state Rep. Adam Bird (R-New Richmond) and many other Republicans say the system works well and only became a mess under O’Connor.
“I believe the maps were constitutional,” Bird said of the legislative maps, which were closed five times, and the congressional maps, which were rejected twice. “They became increasingly gerrymandered as we went forward to try to satisfy the court’s demands.”
Gov. Mike DeWine, who is also on the ORC, said he is considering the amendment.
“I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this and trying to really understand exactly what this will do,” DeWine said Wednesday. “I’ve also looked at what other states have done — so stay tuned.”
However, in the winter he told us in an interview that he did not like the current system.
“It just didn’t work, it was a mess. … I don’t think the Legislature should be involved in redistricting,” DeWine said. “I don’t think the governor should be involved.”
However, he expressed concerns about finding mapmakers that people trust.
Why is this necessary?
For Miller, this is not a partisan issue.
“It’s about restoring balance and fairness,” she said.
The League of Women Voters began fighting in Ohio in the 1970s, when Democrats were gerrymandering. Republicans actually supported a major overhaul, she added.
“We need legislators to listen to us, the people of Ohio, right now, because legislators know they are going to win their seats over and over again,” Miller said.
Democratic politicians, organizations from labor unions to police, and even other Republicans have criticized the extensive majority of the Ohio GOP for being anti-democratic on the following grounds: defying the will of voters on anti-gerrymandering reform they passed in 2015 and 2018, defying the bipartisan Ohio Supreme Court that has struck down gerrymandered district maps seven times, attempting to undermine the people’s voice on abortion, marijuana, and voting access (special elections designed to make it harder to change the Constitution), withholding constitutional funding for public schools for decades, and a seemingly endless list of other fights that Democrats have lost time and time again (they claim because the district maps are gerrymandered).
Something that has united Democrats and Republicans in their anger at state lawmakers is the August 2023 special election. Opponents have rejected Issue 1, which would have made it harder to change the state constitution. It failed 57% to 43%.
Twenty-two of Ohio’s 88 counties voted “no” on Issue 1, which was nearly 60% of the vote. Twelve are urban, six are semi-rural, and four are completely rural. Fifteen of the 22 counties voted for Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election.
“[Lawmakers] “We can play on the party’s extremes and on wealthy donors,” Miller added.
Laws have been passed, such as banning transgender people from participating in sports in high schools and junior high schools, but they only affect 0.0000075% of the populationBut the biggest issues Ohioans tell us they want state lawmakers to address are inflation, property taxes and health care. Legislation on those issues is rarely on the table, according to affordable housing groups.
What happens next?
The initiative now heads to the Ohio Ballot Board, chaired by Secretary of State Frank LaRose, where the provision will be reviewed and could be changed, as was the case with the abortion amendment last November.
According to the CNP, the electoral commission, which has not yet scheduled a meeting to consider the initiative, has until August 22 to “write and adopt the wording that will be on the ballot on November 5,” as required by the constitution to “properly identify the substance of the proposal that will be voted on.”
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