Issue 1 would fix a generations-old problem, proponents say
By Anneliese White/Kent State NewsLab
This November, Ohio citizens are voting on Issue 1, which seeks to end gerrymandering in the Buckeye State.
More specifically, Issue 1 seeks to replace the Ohio Redistricting Commission, which is made up of seven elected leaders, with a 15-member Ohio Citizens Redistricting Commission.
The current Ohio Redistricting Commission’s seven members are the Governor, Auditor, Secretary of State and four people appointed by the Senate President, Speaker of the House, Senate Minority Leader and House Minority Leader. (All four appointees are currently legislators in the Statehouse.) The commission proposed by Issue 1 would be made up of 15 citizen members — five Republicans, five Democrats and five Independents.
The goal of Issue 1, proponents say, is to avoid giving one party an overwhelming advantage during redistricting.
“The beauty of citizens [making the district maps] is they’re not in power, ” said Sherry Rose, development director of the League of Women Voters of Ohio, a nonpartisan organization that works to protect the rights of voters, having supported both parties when the other drew gerrymandered maps.
The term “gerrymandering” dates back to 1812, when Massachusetts Gov. Elbridge Gerry signed off on an oddly-shaped state senate district, according to Rose.
“It looked like a salamander,” Rose said.
Today, legislative districts at both the Congressional and state levels are redrawn every 10 years following the Census.
Even though gerrymandering can negatively affect any political party, in Ohio, it’s currently skewed toward Republicans.
Based on general election results from 2020, Ohioans voted roughly 55% Republican to 45% Democratic.
The Ohio House of Representatives in 2022, however, had 67 Republican members and 32 Democratic members. Of Ohio’s 33 members of Congress, 26 are Republicans and 7 are Democrats.
“When we are drawing those district lines at this time, we’re not seeing that moderate representation,” Rose said.
The Ohio Redistricting Commission produced seven unconstitutional maps and failed to produce a constitutional map in time for the 2022 elections.
These continued gerrymandered districts prompted a group called Citizens not Politicians to put forward a new anti-gerrymandering amendment proposal in August 2023. This proposal would replace politicians on the Ohio Redistricting Commission with Ohio citizens.
Timeline of gerrymandering in Ohio
- 1967: Ohio adopted a Constitutional amendment that created an Apportionment Board to draw districts for Ohio’s House and Senate districts.
- 1971: The Democratic Party held a supermajority after the 1970 census and drew the first gerrymandered map, according to the League of Women Voters.
- 1991: The Republican Party took control of the Apportionment Board.
- 2015: The Apportionment Board was replaced by the Ohio Redistricting Commission, and an anti-gerrymandering reform passed for Ohio’s Statehouse districts.
- 2018: An anti-gerrymandering reform passed for Ohio’s Congressional districts.
- 2021: The Ohio Redistricting Commission drew maps for the Senate and House districts under the new criteria passed by Ohio voters for the first time. This new criteria included two more legislative appointees, one from each party, to make seven people on the Ohio Redistricting Commission. It also encouraged bipartisan teamwork by requiring two members from each party to approve a plan for the map to last the entire 10 years. Otherwise, approved plans would only last for four years, and the maps would need to be redrawn for the second half of the decade.
- 2022: The maps were once again gerrymandered in favor of the Republican supermajority. The Ohio Supreme Court rejected the 2022 maps a total of seven times. In April 2022, a federal court granted a conservative activist’s motion to use the third set of unconstitutional maps if the commission could not pass new maps in time. The commission ran out the clock, which meant in May 2022, Ohioans still voted according to the third set of unconstitutional maps.
Republicans face political fallout if the issue passes, said J. Cherie Strachan, director of the Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics and professor of political science at the University of Akron.
“Republicans currently have an advantage, and they would certainly like to hang on to it,” she said.
Robert Paduchik, co-chairman of the Republican National Committee from 2017 to 2019, argued that the proposal is not an effective solution to gerrymandering.
“[Democrats and their allies] want to put an unaccountable, unelected board in place to draw these districts,” Paduchik said.
Citizens Not Politicians, one of the primary groups organizing on behalf of Issue 1, says that all meetings and action of the new Citizens Redistricting Commission would be public. They also say any commissioner can be removed by the commission after notice and a public hearing for various reasons. This includes causes such as gross misconduct, neglect of duty and actions undermining public trust, as well as other reasons.
“They still have to answer to the people, and they still have to answer to the courts,” Rose said.