Remember the Frank LaRose who worked across party lines, solving problems and finding common ground with his opponents? He was on the decline, especially as the Secretary of State tried to gain popularity and rise in the pro-Trump Republican Party.
Now it has disappeared completely. At least, that was the clear impression when LaRose presided over the last meeting of the Ohio Ballot Board. If a year ago he managed to blatantly distort the ballot language on the subject of abortion rights, this achievement amounted to a whole other dimension of misrepresentation, deception and even dishonesty.
The episode raises the question: Who sold themselves cheaper, LaRose or JD Vance?
And all of this in the pursuit of a party-political triumph: LaRose and his Republican colleagues want to thwart the attempt by Citizens Not Politicians to reform the division of congressional and legislative districts in Ohio. The aim is to replace self-serving representatives with a 15-member independent commission.
The state constitution says the Board of Elections cannot “mislead, deceive, or defraud” voters through the wording of its ballots. It’s hard to see how the Republican majority could jump that hurdle in this case. At the very least, the spirit of the law was violated, and the wording serves as an argument rather than an explanation.
Consider the headline: “A commission shall be created, not elected by the voters of the State, nor subject to recall.” That sounds ominous—until you remember that the people elected and subject to recall by the voters are the very legislators and officeholders who have been responsible for the extreme gerrymandering of Ohio’s electoral districts.
The ballot says the proposal would “remove constitutional protections against gerrymandering that were approved by nearly three-quarters of Ohio voters who participated in the 2015 and 2018 statewide elections.” That sounds terrible, too. The truth is that the proposal would strengthen protections against gerrymandering, reflecting the first purpose of the reforms that voters overwhelmingly passed nine and six years ago.
Why did these reforms fail? Because LaRose and other politicians ignored the wishes of the voters and made it clear that an independent commission was necessary.
The wording states that the commission must “manipulate the boundaries of state legislative and congressional districts … according to a formula based on partisan outcomes.” Here, too, the proposal aims to do the opposite – to move away from extreme gerrymandering.
These “partisan results”? That means actual statewide elections. The proposal, like previous reforms, calls for districts to be drawn closely to the voting behavior of Ohioans – in other words, no gerrymandering to give Republicans a supermajority if the party gets about 54% of the vote.
Elsewhere, voters will find that the wording on the ballot provides a confusing description of how the independent commission members are selected. That’s not because the process of getting five Republicans, five Democrats and five independents is so difficult. Other states have followed a similar path.
The wording also states that Ohioans will be limited in their ability to participate in the redistricting process. Hardly. The proposal is seen as a major step forward in terms of transparency and openness.
A few days before the election committee meeting, Governor Mike DeWine voiced this criticism. He warned that “proportionality is king.” Why? He argues that the emphasis on closely matching previous statewide election results would undermine other priorities such as district compactness and keeping communities of interest together, resulting in nothing less than “gerrymandering on an extreme scale.”
The governor predicted that Ohioans would regret their decision if they approved the proposal. But that is not the case in other states. Those states have not found the approach flawless either. Michigan, for example, has struggled to get black representation right. In Washington, there were politicians who still had their own interests at heart.
Some experts worry that the proposal could be too precise by requiring the commission to land within plus or minus 3 percentage points to achieve the closest match possible. They raise concerns about whether proportionality will work if Ohio slides even deeper into the red.
From all this, one obvious fact emerges: no plan is perfect.
Ohio voters will have to ask themselves in November whether an independent commission’s plan would be significantly better than what we currently have.
This, many have noted, is how the Republican majority on the Board of Elections made its case. Desperate to preserve a system that cemented huge (and undeserved) Republican majorities, they crafted language that disregarded their legal obligation and once again showed little respect for the state’s long-established process for citizen initiatives.
The governor insists it is his duty to represent his opposition positions. Well, he should. But where was his voice when he, along with other Republicans responsible for redistricting, engaged in extreme gerrymandering, ignoring the Ohio Supreme Court and the voters’ mandate?
He and Frank LaRose remained virtually silent. So the politicians had their chance. Now the citizens deserve a chance.
Michael Douglas was editorial editor of the Beacon Journal from 1999 to 2019. He can be reached at [email protected].
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