Citizens Not Politicians delivers signatures for ballot initiative
Citizens Not Politicians delivers signatures for anti-gerrymandering initiative in Ohio. With 731,000 signatures, supporters expect it on the ballot
Redistricting, the process of drawing congressional and state legislative districts, is all about making choices and setting priorities.
Gov. Mike DeWine says the priorities laid out in State Issue 1, a new redistricting reform measure on the November ballot, are out of whack and will lead to unfair results. Backers of the proposed reforms say he’s intentionally misunderstanding their amendment.
Let’s break down the dispute.
What is proportionality?
DeWine focused on a priority called proportionality. Proportionality is when the number of districts Republicans are likely to win and the number of districts Democrats are likely to win match (or are pretty close to) recent statewide election results.
For example, Ohio Republicans won about 55% of the vote in recent statewide elections so a proportionate map would favor Republicans in eight or nine of Ohio’s 15 congressional districts. Currently, Republicans hold 10 of 15 seats.
DeWine says that trying to hit those numbers is textbook gerrymandering because mapmakers would draw districts to create a specific outcome.
“You can hit these numbers. You can draw these maps that hit the proportionality numbers,” DeWine said during a Wednesday news conference slamming the ballot measure. “You’re not going to like the results. The public’s not going to tolerate what they see.”
Backers of the proposed amendment to create a 15-person citizen redistricting commission say proportionality gives mapmakers guardrails, not mandates. Maps can deviate by 3 percentage points in either direction (or more if it’s mathematically impossible to hit the state’s voting preferences).
“The provision exists to make clear that there is an out of bounds,” said Yurij Rudensky, a deputy director of the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, which backs the Ohio amendment. “It is a bit misleading to characterize this provision as dictating a particular outcome in any given election.”
Ohio’s current redistricting rules require lawmakers and statewide elected officials to try to match the statewide voting preferences of Ohioans − but the Ohio Supreme Court repeatedly criticized mapmakers for failing to do so.
“The Ohio Constitution actually already mandates that the state legislative districts be proportional to the statewide preferences of Ohio voters,” said Simone Leeper, legal counsel for the Campaign Legal Center, which endorsed the Ohio amendment. “That is already the law in Ohio, and that’s actually the law that was violated by Gov. DeWine and the other politicians who engaged in severe partisan gerrymandering in the last cycle.”
Is proportionality ‘king?’
DeWine also contends that proportionality will be “king” and outweigh all other criteria. But in the proposed amendment, several factors come first: Districts must be geographically contiguous, which means they can’t be split into two separate parts and must abide by federal laws, including a ban on disenfranchising minority voters and a requirement that congressional districts have the same number of people.
“Any map that’s passed is going to have to comply with federal law. That’s not optional,” Leeper said. “No. 1 is complying with the U.S. Constitution and the Voting Rights Act and the second step is ensuring that any map that goes through is not a partisan gerrymander and they’ve provided a clear way for commissioners to measure that.”
The proposal also requires mapmakers to ignore where sitting lawmakers live. Statehouse maps approved by Democrats and Republicans last year protected incumbent lawmakers from running against one another.
After that, mapmakers must keep communities of interest together. The proposal defines these as “communities of people with broadly shared interests and representational needs, including, without limitation, interests and representational needs that arise from common ethnic, racial, social, cultural, geographic, environmental, socioeconomic or historic identities or concerns.”
Unlike Ohio’s current redistricting rules, the new proposal has no limit on splitting counties, cities or townships. Those rules required mapmakers to keep Cincinnati intact in one congressional district, which Democratic Rep. Greg Landsman won in 2022. That district stretches from the Queen City to Warren County.
“Communities of interest will be defined by the people of Ohio. When that aligns with city and county lines, the commission will preserve those,” Citizens Not Politicians spokesman Chris Davey said. “What matters is that the public will decide what matters most.”
Jessie Balmert is a reporter for the USA TODAY Network Ohio Bureau, which serves the Columbus Dispatch, Cincinnati Enquirer, Akron Beacon Journal and 18 other affiliated news organizations across Ohio.
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Publish date : 2024-08-11 15:00:00
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