The Ohio Board of Elections on Friday adopted controversial language from Secretary of State Frank LaRose as an election summary intended to explain November’s anti-gerrymandering amendment to voters. Supporters of the amendment have called the language misleading and unconstitutional and said they would challenge it in court.
The committee met Friday morning to finalize the summary that will appear on each ballot, the last words Ohioans will see before deciding for or against the measure.
The proposed amendment would remove Ohio politicians from the process of drawing maps for the statehouse and congressional districts and instead create a citizens’ commission made up of Republicans, Democrats and independents to draw the maps.
Led by Ohio Secretary of State LaRose, the panel passed its preferred slogan for the amendment by a 3-2 vote, while the panel’s two Democratic members, State Senator Paula Hicks-Hudson and State Representative Terrence Upchurch, voted against adoption. LaRose is one of the politicians currently serving on Ohio’s redistricting commission and one of the Republican members who repeatedly voted for maps that were ruled unconstitutionally gerrymandered by a bipartisan majority of the Ohio Supreme Court before they were forced on voters in 2022 by a federal court after time ran out to create constitutional maps.
On Friday, an amendment was made to the LaRose language, introduced by board member and Republican state Rep. Theresa Gavarone. That amendment takes a paragraph that says the commission is “obligated to gerrymander the boundaries of the state’s legislative and congressional districts…” and changes it to read that the commission is “obligated to gerrymander those districts,” a change that drew shocked jeers from the crowd gathered at the board meeting.
The ballot measure would establish a 15-member redistricting commission to decide on statehouse and congressional districts across the state. According to the authors of the amendment, a group called Citizens Not Politicians, this would be done in public meetings and would provide opportunities for citizen participation later in the process.
The commission would be made up of citizens, not elected officials. Citizens Not Politicians submitted its own proposal to the elections board for consideration, stating that commission members would be those “who have demonstrated the absence of disqualifying conflicts of interest and have demonstrated the ability to conduct the redistricting process impartially, with integrity and fairness.”
Democrats attempted to approve language put forward by Citizens Not Politicians, but the motion was defeated 3-2, with support only from Democratic board members.
Hicks-Hudson also attempted to replace LaRose’s wording with the phrase “citizens, not politicians,” but this motion was also rejected.
“This is a dangerous proposal that threatens the integrity of the vote on Question 1,” Hicks-Hudson said of the secretary of state’s wording.
The title states that the amendment would create “an appointed redistricting commission that cannot be elected or recalled by the voters of the state.” The language approved by the panel speaks of eliminating “the long-standing ability of Ohioans to hold their representatives accountable for drawing fair districts for the state legislature and Congress.” The goal is to “remove the constitutional protections against gerrymandering that nearly three-quarters of Ohio voters approved in the 2015 and 2018 statewide elections.”
Attorney Don McTigue argued that it was impossible for citizens to hold their elected representatives accountable for voting in gerrymandered constituencies – where, by definition, the gerrymandered representatives were guaranteed to win.
“The problem is that the whole accountability argument only works when you have fair districts, not when you have districts as heavily gerrymandered as in this state,” McTigue said during the public hearing at the board meeting.
McTigue, who represents the ballot initiative’s sponsors and supporters, requested that the Citizens Not Politicians campaign’s language be used rather than the Secretary of State’s language, citing Ohio law that dictates the language and heading on the ballot.
“The language is astounding because it is false and misleading, and it is blatantly biased,” McTigue said. “There is no reasonable person who … could conclude after reading this language that it is an honest attempt to create fair ballot language that allows voters to make an independent decision on the issue.”
He referred to the redistricting actions of 2015 and 2018, in which the Board of Elections “summarized the key aspects of the proposed redistricting amendments to the Ohio Constitution.”
The wording that LaRose announced at the election committee meeting was written by him “with the input of my team,” sharply criticized by those responsible and supporters of the measure in the run-up to the session as misleading and biased language that violates constitutional rules on ballot language.
LaRose defended the language in his summary, saying the amendment would “limit the right of Ohioans to freely express their opinions to members of the commission or commission staff regarding the redistricting process or proposed redistricting plans,” and said the language might unduly shield members of the new commission from public scrutiny.
McTigue disagreed, saying that context was important when reading the summary, which is why he did not support the Foreign Minister’s wording.
“I think something can be misleading or deceptive if you don’t know the full context,” McTigue said.
The Secretary of State’s text was released on Thursday, leaving board members and McTigue little time to read it, but it was discussed at the meeting.
“I think it should be really clear that 24 hours is not necessarily a lot of time to grapple with over 900 words that I’m not sure really fit within the scope of what the law requires and … do a really careful evaluation of the language,” said committee member and state Senator Paula Hicks-Hudson.
Board member and state Senator Theresa Gavarone said the 900 words of LaRose’s wording “explain exactly what is at stake,” noting that the details of the redistricting process were not included in the summary proposed by Citizens Not Politicians.
LaRose also addressed the selection process for commissioners in the amendment, saying the longest part of his summary was explaining that process.
“The path that takes you into the current commission (the Ohio Redistricting Commission) is pretty straightforward,” LaRose said. “(The proposed process) is a bit of a Rube Goldberg maneuver that involves a lot of twists and turns … it’s a complex process.”
He described the five-point summary proposed by the CNP as “totally inadequate” and could not discern the “content” of the amendment.
Well-known opponents of the ballot proposal include Senate President Matt Huffman and Ohio Governor Mike DeWine, who both publicly opposed the proposal. Huffman said the move would bring a flood of legal problems for the stateand DeWine said the focus on proportionality in the rules of the redistricting process would cause more problems than advocates claim it would solve, and “Ohio would actually end up with a system that forces mapmakers to create gerrymandered districts,” he said at a recent press conference.
Supporters of the amendment have said they will appeal the Ohio Ballot Board’s decision in court, just as supporters of the reproductive rights ballot bill did in the Ohio Supreme Court after the ballot board’s approval.
According to Jen Miller of the League of Women Voters of Ohio, Citizens Not Politicians has already pledged to “seek relief” from the Ohio Supreme Court by filing a brief on the language next week.
LaRose did not speak to reporters after the meeting.
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