Ohio Voters Can End Gerrymandering With This One Weird Trick!
Make Ohio the next Michigan.
Ohio voters will get the chance this fall to end their state’s longstanding problem with Republican gerrymandering, now that a voter initiative aimed at barring politicians from drawing voting districts has made it to the ballot for November. The Ohio Secretary of State’s office announced Tuesday that the constitutional amendment supported by Citizens Not Politicians had more than enough signatures to qualify for the ballot, as the Cincinnati Enquirer reports:
In total, 535,005 of the 731,306 signatures submitted were accepted, which was a validation rate of 73.2%. The group needed to clear at least 413,487 valid signatures from at least 44 counties to qualify for the November election. It cleared the required threshold in 58 counties.
This also is where we point out that requiring initiatives to get some percentage of signatures in a particular number of counties is itself a tricksy little anti-democracy move aimed at making it far more difficult for voters to get laws and constitutional amendments on the ballot in the first place.
As you may recall, last year Ohio Republicans tried to thwart a voter initiative aimed at protecting abortion rights by making the initiative process itself much more difficult. Voters said hell no to that fuckery, then went on to pass the constitutional amendment — and legalized weed, too, while they were at it.
So what the hell, said reform-minded Ohioans, how about we unfuck our voting districts, as well? Hence, the constitutional amendment that’s going before voters this fall, which will remove elected officials from the Ohio Redistricting Commission altogether. Instead, the 15-member commission will be made up of five Republicans, five Democrats, and five independents.
The panel would be chosen by retired state judges, and would also exclude lobbyists and political consultants as well as elected officials. And maybe anyone named “JD,” just to be safe. More details here, on the nitty-gritty of the redistricting process that’s prescribed by the amendment.
The initiative drive was a bipartisan effort, too, because some Ohio Republicans didn’t care for what the modern version of their party has become. It was drafted with the help of retired state supreme court Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor, who said after the successful petition drive,
“This certification is a historic step towards restoring fairness in Ohio’s electoral process. With this amendment on the ballot, Ohioans have the chance to reclaim their power from the self-serving politicians who want to stay in power long past their expiration date while ignoring the needs of the voters.”
This will be Ohio’s third shot at unfucking the GOP gerrymander that has given Republicans more-than-proportional representation in both Congress and the state Legislature since 2011. Two previous voter-driven amendments, in 2015 and 2018, attempted to force the commission to draw fair districts that didn’t give either party an advantage, but left the actual map-making to the Legislature and statewide elected officials.
Big surprise: The Republican-dominated Lege, which got that way through earlier gerrymandering, wasn’t interested in maps that didn’t concentrate power with Republicans. As the Enquirer points out,
Between 2021 and 2022, Republicans held the majority of seats on the Ohio Redistricting Commission. The Ohio Supreme Court repeatedly ruled that Republicans crafted maps that unfairly benefited GOP candidates. […] Federal lawsuits and an eventual bipartisan compromise led to the current maps.
If the amendment passes this fall, the newly constituted redistricting commission will draw new maps that will go into effect with the 2026 elections. If it doesn’t pass — which seems unlikely given the overwhelming support for the previous two redistricting amendments — the current maps will stay in place until 2030, and hoo boy then we get another US Census and Republicans will no doubt try for a whole new gerrymander.
[Cincinnati Enquirer / Daily Kos]
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End gerrymandering in Ohio? Not so fast say these Ohio diners.
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