COLUMBUS — Both sides of the redistricting reform question on Tuesday’s ballot claimed Wednesday that their position is the one that would truly end partisan “gerrymandering” in Ohio.
“Although the message is that this ballot issue is all about ending gerrymandering, this is requiring gerrymandering in the Ohio Constitution for partisan reasons,” Columbus attorney Frank Strigari said at an Issue 1 forum hosted by the Columbus Lawyers Chapter of the Federalist Society.
He played a role in drawing past and current maps as a lawyer for Statehouse Republicans.
“In order to draw districts to give more seats to Democrats, you have to pull people out of these big cities,” he said. “You have to pull Democrats out and spread them out to the suburbs.”
That, he said, would also have the effect of splitting minority communities and diluting their voting clout.
But Jen Miller, executive director of the League of Women Voters of Ohio, countered that the text of the proposed constitutional amendment expressly states that it would “ban gerrymandering” to favor any political party or candidate.
The requirement that final overall maps — not individual districts — “closely correspond” with how Ohioans have voted in statewide elections over the prior six years is the means through which the Ohio Supreme Court would ultimately judge the fairness of maps in the event of legal challenges.
It’s all about the balance of power, she said.
“[Legislative Republicans] are so powerful that they can override the governor’s will, and they can ignore the Supreme Court even when they gave them that job,” Ms. Miller said. “That’s not working for anyone.”
A 4-3 bipartisan panel of the high court struck down maps drawn by the existing Ohio Redistricting Commission seven times as unconstitutionally biased toward Republicans. But unconstitutional maps were used in the 2022 elections anyway.
“So if we want to have a government that functions, we need to bring the balance back,” Ms. Miller said. “And I think the only way, the beginning, is we have to end gerrymandering.”
Ms. Miller noted that the league has long pushed for remap reform, dating back decades when Democrats held the pen.
Issue 1 asks voters to amend the Ohio Constitution to replace two existing processes for redrawing congressional and state legislative districts with a single 15-member commission with membership equally divided between Republicans, Democrats, and independents.
No politician — elected or appointed officials, candidates, lobbyists, political consultants, contractors, staffers, and their immediate families — could serve. The amendment would look back six years for such conflicts of interest.
Maps must comply with federal rules and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, consist of districts with geographically contiguous territory and generally equal populations, and preserve communities of interest “to the extent practicable.”
The “closely correspond” provision has led opponents of Issue 1 to claim that it would mandate that the new “citizens” commission actually engage in gerrymandering to achieve partisan goals.
Ms. Miller pushed back against claims from the opposition that this debate is being driven by out-of-state interests which have supplied the vast majority of the $37 million that proponents had raised through mid-October.
“Actually, it’s the other way around,” Ms. Miller said. “We wrote the policy that we thought would work and then went and looked for supporters, not the other way around. That’s the first time we did it that way, to be honest.”
The opposing committee, Ohio Works, has also taken large out-of-state checks, but its total contributions have paled in comparison to those of Citizens Not Politicians.
Ms. Miller said maps proposed by everyday Ohioans during the 2021 and 2022 redistricting cycle proved that maps could be drawn to keep more governmental jurisdictions intact, create more competitive districts, and still more closely reflect the statewide voting preferences of Ohioans.
The key difference between those maps and the ones proposed by Republicans and Democrats and ultimately adopted by the commission made up entirely of elected officials was that they didn’t start out trying to favor a political party or incumbent candidates.
Mr. Strigari noted that the league was among the plaintiffs who challenged current congressional maps. The litigation argued that the maps likely favored Republicans by a 12-3 margin.
In practice in 2022, those maps resulted in a 10-5 delegation with Democrats picking up seats based in Akron and Cincinnati.
“These arbitrary numbers ..., nobody can script this out,” he said. “Mandating this in the constitution, saying you’ve got to have 55 [Republicans in the Ohio House], plus or minus two or three, and you’ve got to have 45 Democrats? That’s insane.”
At the statehouse, Republicans currently hold super-majorities of 67-32 in the House and 26-7 in the Senate even though the results in statewide races have been closer to about 54 percent Republican to 45 percent Democratic on average over recent elections.
Voting is already well under way. Issue 1 is the only statewide question on the ballot.
First Published October 30, 2024, 8:37 p.m.
