WHAT IS GERRYMANDERING?

Political science professor at the University of Cincinnati, Davide Niven
describes gerrymandering as a process that “makes a party more powerful than it is popular.”

• State legislatures, and the U.S. House of Representatives, are organized by districts. Every 10 years, states use Census data to change district sizes and boundaries according to population shifts. This is required by the US Constitution. Gerrymandering is when the people in charge of redistricting draw the boundaries in ways that ensure their party holds a large majority of seats in a state legislature even when statewide, voters are close to 50-50 Republican-Democrat. Achieved mostly through practices called “packing” and “cracking” — like-minded voters are either concentrated in areas with small numbers of districts or separated into more districts. Both have the effect of diluting their representation at the state level.

• Gerrymandering often leads to districts that take on odd shapes as they’re stretched over large areas to take in sufficient numbers of voters from one party while excluding voters from the other. In the early 1800s, a lesser-known Founding Father, Elbridge Gerry, a governor of Massachusetts, signed a bill that created a district that critics said was shaped like a salamander, is what inspired the word “gerrymander”. To be clear, both parties have gerrymandered, and continue to.

• Is Ohio gerrymandered? Yes, and it has become a tradition in the Buckeye state. Throughout Ohio history, the majority party in the state legislature “rigs” elections by gerrymandering districts. More than 9 million Ohioans (about 77 percent of the state’s population) live in districts where elections for state representatives are not seriously contested according to the Brennan Center, a nonpartisan law and policy institute. In other words, in most districts, the Republican or Democrat is almost guaranteed to win.

• Republicans are the ones currently benefiting in the Ohio General Assembly, the state’s legislature. There are 26 Republicans and 7 Democrats in the Ohio Senate, and 67 Republicans and 32 Democrats in the Ohio House of Representatives. With those majorities, Republicans have enough votes to override vetoes by the governor (meaning they can pass a law even if the governor refuses to sign it). You would assume with these majorities that Ohio is around 70% Republican. But in statewide elections, the outcome is often much closer, in fact the most recent U.S. Senate races in 2022, Republican candidate, J.D. Vance, won with 53% of the vote. In 2018, the Democrat, Sherrod Brown, won with almost the exact same percentage. Presidential candidate Donald Trump won Ohio twice, by garnering 53.3% of the vote in 2020 and 51.8% in 2016. In those elections, voters of both parties turned out in high numbers.

Recent ballot initiatives are more instructive. The ballot initiative process allows citizens to bypass the legislature and pass laws or amend the state constitution. (That’s how Citizens Not Politicians got on the ballot) In 2023, Republican leaders and affiliated organizations strongly opposed a constitutional amendment ensuring reproductive rights, including abortion, and a law legalizing recreational marijuana use. Voters passed them anyway by wide margins.

What would the Citizens Not Politicians (Issue One) amendment do?

If passed, the Issue One will:

• Create a 15-member Ohio Citizens Redistricting Commission made up of Democratic, Republican, and Independent voters who broadly represent the different geographic areas and demographics of the state.

• Ban current or former politicians, political party officials and lobbyists from sitting on the Commission.

• Require fair and impartial districts by making it unconstitutional to draw voting districts that discriminate against or favor any political party or individual politician.

• Require the commission to operate under an open and independent process.