Ohio Faces Gerrymandering Challenge as All House Seats Are Up for Election
This fall, every seat in Ohio’s House of Representatives is open for election. Ohio’s 99 districts should be buzzing with competitive campaigns, but due to the way district boundaries have been configured, many candidates already have a clear path to victory months before voters cast their ballots.
The issue stems from gerrymandering, a practice that has frustrated Ohio voters for years. This summer, 535,005 voters supported a ballot initiative aimed at eliminating gerrymandering from Ohio’s political landscape. The initiative, qualifying as Issue 1 for November, faces a new hurdle: a misleading description on the ballot.
Citizens Not Politicians, the driving force behind the initiative, sued for accurate ballot language on Monday. The Brennan Center for Justice, part of the coalition, supports this lawsuit.
Ohio is not alone in this struggle; several states will have similarly uncontested races in 2024 due to gerrymandering. In essence, the practice allows politicians to secure their positions by manipulating district maps to their advantage.
The Citizens Not Politicians ballot initiative proposes shifting the power to draw district maps from politicians to an independent commission of Ohio citizens. This change aims to replace secretive negotiations and political deals with transparent processes that reflect community preferences.
If passed, the amendment would ensure that elections reflect the political shifts among voters, a dynamic Ohio has lacked for over 15 years. The commission’s work would be fully transparent, involving direct input from Ohioans, contrasting sharply with past redistricting efforts carried out in secrecy, such as those in a covert meeting location known as “the Bunker.”
Despite constitutional amendments in 2015 and 2018 meant to address gerrymandering, politicians retained control over redistricting, continuing to draw maps in closed-door meetings and unveiling them at the last possible moment, often during ongoing public hearings.
In 2022, the Ohio Supreme Court ordered lawmakers to redraw district maps following a lawsuit by the Brennan Center on behalf of the Ohio Organizing Collaborative. The court found the maps to be unconstitutional as they did not reflect Ohio voters’ partisan preferences. However, lawmakers repeatedly ignored the court’s orders, making only superficial changes to the maps.
The Ohio Supreme Court rejected these maps a total of seven times from 2022 to 2023, but unconstitutional maps were still used in the 2022 election. Current maps for the 2024 election are similarly problematic.
Ohioans supporting the petition come from diverse political backgrounds, united in their desire for fair representation. They aim to put an end to gerrymandering and ensure their votes have meaningful impact.
