Advocates: Redistricting needs reform
Say Ohio needs better plan to hit next deadline
The panel of politicians tasked with drawing state House and Senate districts didn’t do its homework and now risks missing its final deadline, advocates for redistricting reform said Friday.
During its Tuesday meeting, the Ohio Redistricting Commission did not say when it would present a map for Ohioans to provide feedback on. Members, which include the governor and legislative leaders, also disagreed on who should draw the maps and how incumbent senators’ districts should be treated.
Advocates with Fair Districts Ohio, which pushed for the 2015 and 2018 constitutional amendments, say these details should have been hashed out months ago. They had called for the commission to start meeting long before population data were released.
This week, the commission missed its first constitutional deadline to present a map by Sept. 1. Population data from the U.S. Census Bureau needed to draw districts was several months late, but Democrats and redistricting reform advocates say that’s not a valid excuse.
“I don’t think that the commission has been meeting the moment or meeting the mandate that the voters have required us to do,” House Minority Leader Emilia Sykes, D-akron, a commission member, said in an interview. “It is not only disappointing; It is incredibly frustrating not just for me as a commissioner but also to the public who wanted a different way of drawing our maps.”
In a lawsuit to speed up the delivery of census data, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost’s office argued that Ohio needed the population numbers by Sept. 1 to present a map.
Senate Republican spokesman John Fortney said the Ohio Constitution includes a method to pass a 10-year or four-year map by Sept. 15 and “that would be the goal. The work continues.”
As for Fair Districts Ohio and others
focusing on the Sept. 1 deadline, Fortney said: “I question whether they want to be part of the solution or part of the problem.”
Meanwhile, another deadline is looming: Ohio lawmakers have until Sept. 30 to pass a map for congressional districts that eliminates gerrymandered districts like the so-called “snake on the lake,” which stretches from Toledo to Cleveland.
“The longer we delay this process, it just means that that congressional process gets shortened and more challenging as well,” Sykes said. “We’re going to run into the very same issues all over again, not having learned any of
the lessons of the past.”
Redistricting reform advocates worry that the first blown deadline is a sign of things to come.
“We are certainly concerned that deadlines have already been missed and that there seems to be the chance of more deadlines being missed, both for Statehouse and congressional mapmaking,” said Jen Miller, executive director of the League of Women Voters of Ohio. “We call on mapmakers to right the ship now.”
To right the ship, the commission needs to set a schedule of when they will accept a map and how Ohioans can weigh in, said Catherine Turcer, executive
director of Common Cause Ohio. “When a deadline is missed, the best way to not miss the next deadline is to come up with clear ways for how you’re going to proceed to get to the next deadline.”
As of Friday, the Ohio Redistricting Commission had not set its next meeting. Neither co-chair knew when the commission would accept a map, their spokespeople said.
Jessie Balmert is a reporter for the USA TODAY Network Ohio Bureau, which serves the Akron Beacon Journal, Cincinnati Enquirer, Columbus Dispatch and 18 other affiliated news organizations across Ohio.