Some words make your eyes glaze over, no matter how important the ideas they convey. “Reapportionment” is one of them. So in Ohio, let’s call it by another name: political corruption.

Neither the General Assembly nor the state’s U.S. House delegation represents all Ohioans fairly and equally. They aren’t intended to.

Instead, the Republican elected officials who control state government, and thus get to draw the maps of Ohio’s legislative and congressional districts, have manipulated them in a way that maximizes their party’s power and minimizes competition from Democrats. It’s happened even though Ohio is a perennial swing state in national elections, and polls show that Ohioans identify themselves as Republicans and Democrats in roughly equal numbers.

This theft of democracy has to end now. Until they become truly representative bodies, nothing the General Assembly or congressional delegation does will have political legitimacy. And that’s bad for Ohioans of all parties, or no party.

Hold the partisan outrage, please, because this is a bipartisan offense. Democrats who control other statehouses engage in similarly self-interested gerrymandering. That’s why we shouldn’t allow either party to dictate the process.

In Ohio, despite the fairly close split in the party preferences that voters express, three-fourths of our U.S. House members are Republicans. So are two-thirds of state lawmakers. Last November’s GOP landslide had a lot to do with those outcomes, of course.

But in the 2012 election, when Ohioans comfortably re-elected President Obama and U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, both Democrats, the lopsided Republican advantages in the U.S. House and General Assembly were about as great. That year, the average victory margin in the state’s U.S. House races was nearly 2-to-1.

These excesses weren’t accidents. They were the planned results of a rigged, secretive political game.

Why does this matter to you? To preserve the dominance of the party in power, gerrymandering divides communities, both of interest and geographically. Democrat Marcy Kaptur now represents a U.S. House district that stretches all the way from Toledo to the Cleveland area.

No choice

When general-election competition between the major parties doesn’t matter much, and voters know they don’t have real choices, turnout goes down. When the congressional and legislative elections that truly count are party primaries, candidates of both parties appeal to ideological extremes rather than the broad middle.

Once they’re elected, such extremism promotes polarization, gridlock, and dysfunction, and discourages cooperation, compromise, and accountability. A recent example: U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan of northwest Ohio says his opposition to President Obama’s immigration policy has “received overwhelming support from people in my district.”

That would hardly be surprising, since Mr. Jordan’s district was tailored to his benefit. But now his allies on the far right accuse Republican House Speaker John Boehner, who oversaw the gerrymandering of the Ohio congressional delegation, of using attack ads to defeat Mr. Jordan in a future GOP primary.

Gerrymandering unfairly favors incumbents of both parties. It dilutes minorities’ voting strength. It mocks the principle of “one person, one vote” by allowing politicians to pick their voters rather than the other way around.

The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments this month in a case that could affect Ohio, even though it comes from Arizona. That state uses an independent, nonpartisan, appointed commission, approved by voters, to create its political maps. Districts there have become more competitive, and the process of drawing the lines is more transparent.

But state lawmakers who lost their ability to dictate what Arizona’s congressional districts look like are suing, claiming that the Constitution gives them, not voters, that power. If the high court finds in their favor when it rules this year, similar redistricting commissions in 16 other states (not including Ohio) could be in jeopardy. Other voter-approved electoral reforms could be threatened as well.

Ohio’s options

I think Ohio needs such an independent citizens’ commission, to make redistricting impartial rather than partisan. Secretary of State Jon Husted, the state’s chief elections officer, disagrees.

Ohioans will vote this year on a proposal that would keep redistricting in the hands of elected officials. But it would require bipartisan agreement on legislative maps, to prevent either party from monopolizing the process. Mr. Husted, a Republican, has advocated such a plan for a decade, as secretary of state and before that as state House speaker and a state senator.

“This is going to make government more responsive,” the secretary told me. “By changing the way we draw legislative districts, this is going to change the dynamics in the Statehouse.”

You have to credit Mr. Husted’s willingness to take on powerful members of his own party on the issue, even though he was a member of the state Apportionment Board that gerrymandered the current legislature. But the plan that the General Assembly has placed on the ballot has big drawbacks.

It affects only legislative redistricting, not congressional reapportionment. Speaker Boehner and other Ohio Republican leaders used the Supreme Court case as an excuse to keep the House delegation out of the ballot proposal, although Arizona’s process is much different.

The proposal wouldn’t take effect until after the next federal census in 2020, when new population numbers in Ohio will require political maps to be revised. The earliest legislative elections it could affect would be in 2022, and if the parties can’t agree on new maps that year, it could be delayed until 2026.

The proposal is better than nothing. But Ohio can’t wait until well into the next decade for a small-d democratic restoration.

Secretary Husted notes that Ohio voters had opportunities in 2005 and 2012 to turn redistricting over to an outside commission, and refused. He questions whether any such panel can be truly independent.

The previous commission proposals failed because they were too complicated to explain easily to voters. Trying again, with a clearer, simpler process, seems preferable to expecting the parties to do in Ohio what they have failed to do for decades: provide fair political representation.

The skewed composition of the Gerrymandered Assembly helps explain why Lake Erie isn’t getting cleaned up. It’s why Ohio is sweating what should be a no-brainer: the expansion of its Medicaid program of health care for poor Ohioans, paid for by the federal government. It’s why Ohio is one of the least friendly states to gay people, or women who want to exercise their reproductive rights, or people who want to vote — but not necessarily for the ruling party.

“Political integrity” doesn’t have to be an oxymoron. The U.S. Supreme Court can preserve voters’ ability to take back the political process in their states. And if the court does so, Ohio voters need to take advantage of that opportunity, soon.

David Kushma is editor of The Blade. Contact him at: dkushma@theblade.com or on Twitter @dkushma1

First Published March 15, 2015, 4:00 a.m.