Mediator to be part of Ohio’s plans for new maps
COLUMBUS, Ohio — The Ohio Redistricting Commission has decided to look for two independent mapmakers and a mediator to help come up with new district maps after the state Supreme Court’s rejection of a third set of maps presented by the Republican-dominated panel.
The commission decided Saturday to seek recommendations for the two independent mapmakers to join the four mapmakers already working with Republican and Democratic lawmakers in drafting a fourth set of maps for state House and Senate districts. A mediator is to be sought to help resolve disputes.
The seven-member commission hopes to approve the choices in a meeting Monday, but the current mapmakers and one staff member of each commissioner are to immediately begin meeting to identify “complex issues” and areas of agreement and disagreement to be presented to the independent mapmakers and the mediator. All are ordered to follow state Supreme Court rulings and the state constitution.
The court in a recent 4-3 vote rejected the last plan even as final ballots were being prepared for the May 3 primary election, ordering new maps submitted to the secretary of state by March 28 and filed with the court the next day.
Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor, a moderate Republican who has repeatedly joined court Democrats to invalidate the maps, cited “substantial and compelling evidence” that “the main goal of the individuals who drafted the second revised plan was to favor the Republican Party and disfavor the Democratic Party.”
Of particular concern, the court said, was that Republicans have all three times drafted the plan approved by the commission without input from its Democratic members.
Meanwhile, a growing chorus of interest groups and politicians of both parties has begun calling on lawmakers to delay the primary — to June or even August — in light of the latest ruling.
Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose blasted national Democrats and the Ohio Supreme Court for the predicament. He accused the Biden administration of intentionally delaying census results on which maps are built, deep-pocketed “out-of-state special interests” of a time-eating litigation strategy, and the high court’s bipartisan majority of dawdling in its deliberations.