COLUMBUS, Ohio (Statehouse News Bureau) — Supporters of the amendment, which would exclude politicians from the process of electing members of Congress and the Legislature, are angry about the summary approved by the Ohio Ballot Board, and the group behind the amendment said it will take the matter to court next week.
Republicans on the Board of Elections approved language that will appear on the November ballot, written by the Republican Secretary of State for a redistricting amendment that most Republicans oppose.
“This is an example of why we need to prohibit politicians from gerrymandering our districts,” said Jen Miller, executive director of the League of Women Voters of Ohio. “The same people who gerrymandered our districts are now rigging the wording on the ballot. It’s illegal and it will rig voters. And they’re trying to rig the outcome of the election.”
What happened at the Ohio Ballot Board meeting?
The “Citizens, Not Politicians” amendment, which will be on the ballot this fall, would create a 15-member commission to draw congressional and state legislative districts. Retired judges would help select the citizens’ panel, made up of five Republicans, five Democrats and five independents. Politicians and lobbyists would not be allowed to serve on the panel. It would eliminate the Ohio Redistricting Commission, a panel of seven elected officials created in 2015. Supporters of the proposal say the process, approved in 2015 to oversee legislative districts and in 2018 for congressional districts, has led politicians to create districts that have been ruled unconstitutionally gerrymandered seven times.
Voters will not see the amendment itself on the ballot, but the summary. Citizens Not Politicians had proposed a short summary of its detailed amendment with five bullet points.
But Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose, who sits on the Ohio Redistricting Commission and has voted for all the maps it has approved, had other ideas. His office proposed a three-page summary.
Don McTigue, an attorney for Citizens Not Politicians, said LaRose’s ballot was more than four times as long as previous wording on redistricting proposals. McTigue also said the wording was unconstitutional because it violated the rule that it cannot be biased. He called it “a farce of Shakespearean proportions.”
LaRose defended the length of the summary, saying the amendment itself is long and full of complicated ideas, and a five-point summary is not sufficient. He also pointed to a part that he said would make it difficult for citizens to communicate their opinions to board members.
“So let’s assume hypothetically that I were a member of the Commission, which I would not be eligible for.
But if I did that and I was at one of my daughters’ soccer games and someone came up to me and said, ‘My neighborhood, my town is a community of interest. And we’re being split in the latest draft map. And I really think you should try to keep us all together,'” LaRose said. “That person would now be violating the Ohio Constitution by expressing their opinion to me about the public work I do as a member of the redistricting commission.”
McTigue rejected this, saying the language used by LaRose was intended to prevent political persuasion related to redistricting.
At one point in the meeting, Senator Theresa Gavarone (Republican of Bowling Green) wanted to make a change to LaRose’s proposed wording in this graphic: “Create a new taxpayer-funded commission of appointees who must manipulate the boundaries of the state’s legislative and congressional districts to favor the two largest political parties in the state of Ohio, according to a formula based on partisan outcomes as the dominant factor.”
She suggested replacing the word “manipulate” with “gerrymandering,” a suggestion that drew gasps and boos from supporters of the plan who filled the room.
The amendment requested by Gavarone was approved 3-2, as was the rest of the text written by LaRose. LaRose himself said, “The summary approved by the board is fair and factual and accurately reflects the content of the proposed amendment.”
(Read the text of the language adopted by the Board Here.)
After the meeting, Democratic House Minority Leader Allison Russo (Upper Arlington), who also sits on Ohio’s redistricting commission, sharply criticized LaRose and the other Republicans for the wording, calling it “political theater” and a “political assassination.”
“They continue to manipulate this process to deceive voters and be dishonest. The gaslighting we saw today has been very sophisticated over the last few years, by the redistricting commission last August in this special election and last November when he did the exact same thing and tried to manipulate the language of the abortion amendment,” Russo said. “That proves exactly why politicians should not be part of this process, and this Secretary of State in particular has no place in this process because he is cheating. He is manipulating voters and he created this final language that was passed.”
“This is dishonest. This is a lie. This is voter fraud,” Russo added.
Citizens Not Politicians said the group will challenge the panel’s wording in court this week.
