COLUMBUS, Ohio (Statehouse News Bureau) — Governor Mike DeWine has spoken out against the fall ballot redistricting proposal, and he also praised Iowa’s redistricting process as one that should be used in the Buckeye State.
But supporters of Citizens Not Politicians, a group that supports Ohio’s amendment, said elements of the process used in Iowa were incorporated into Ohio’s proposal.
While DeWine announced his opposition to the redistricting amendment on the November ballot, he asked voters to reject the “citizens not politicians” amendment. That proposal would replace the seven members of the Ohio Redistricting Commission, all of whom are elected officials, with a 15-member panel made up of equal numbers of Republicans, Democrats and independents, selected by judges through a detailed process. Voters approved changes that allow the Ohio Redistricting Commission to approve the 2015 and 2018 district maps.
DeWine promised to work with Republican lawmakers next year to pass a plan similar to the one in Iowa.
“I believe the Iowa system is an example of a system that keeps politics out of map-drawing. Map-drawing is prohibited under the Iowa Plan. It is prohibited to take into account past voting patterns. The Iowa system is clean. It is simple and has been used successfully to achieve the goals of good government that we all associate with real reform,” DeWine said.
He also warned that accepting redistricting would “lead directly to the worst electoral gerrymandering we have ever seen.”
A closer look at the Iowa plan
Chris Larimer, a political science professor at the University of Northern Iowa, said the redistricting system was developed in the 1980s because the previous method led to political battles over boundaries. One of its key features is that partisan data cannot be taken into account when drawing districts.
Larimer said the process involves a bipartisan legislative body that creates maps largely based on population numbers, with an emphasis on compactness – keeping communities together as much as possible. And sometimes, he said, that creates a problem for some politicians.
“You know what happens in any redistricting: When you get to state legislative districts, incumbents are drawn into the same districts, sometimes even incumbents from the same party, and they end up either having to run against each other in a primary or they decide to move to a different district,” Larimer said.
And Larimer explained that Iowa lawmakers still have the final say, as they would have to approve the maps or draw their own within certain parameters. However, if they cannot agree on maps by Sept. 15, they would be drawn up by the Iowa Supreme Court.
Experts comment on the reorganization of electoral districts
Independent redistricting groups say Ohio’s current districts are among the most gerrymandered in the country. Sam Wang is a redistricting expert at the nonpartisan Princeton Gerrymandering Project.
He has been studying whether he thinks a plan like Iowa’s, which involves the legislature, could work in Ohio, where Republicans hold a two-thirds majority in both houses of the state legislature, control all elected offices at the state level and hold a majority of seats on the Ohio Supreme Court.
“The temptation to harm oneself is overwhelming. And it is really difficult for any person, including politicians, to resist this temptation,” Wang said.
“Ohio’s plan, which will be voted on this November, is the closest thing to a panacea for fair districting,” Wang said.
Simone Leeper is legal counsel on the redistricting team at the Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan government oversight group founded by Trevor Potter, the former Republican chairman of the Federal Election Commission. Leeper’s group recently conducted a study and identified three factors that lead to effective maps. She said the first step is to keep politicians out of the map-drawing process.
“For best results, partisan politicians should have no role in redistricting. In addition, a commission should have full authority over redistricting, not an advisory commission making recommendations to a legislative body that can be ignored or overruled. In addition, there should be a fully transparent process with ample opportunity for public participation.”
Leeper says the voting bill that will go before Ohio voters this November achieves these important goals and “truly sets the standard for a redistricting commission.”
Citizens Not Politics: Amendment based on research
Chris Davey, a spokesman for Citizens Not Politicians, said the amendment’s authors did their homework and examined existing redistricting plans, including Iowa’s.
“We systematically looked at all the states that have successfully used a citizen commission model, looking at the best of what they had and what worked, and eliminating what didn’t work. What we’ve developed here is something new,” Davey said. “It was developed by Ohioans for Ohio, and we truly believe it will become the national gold standard for redistricting.”
Davey said the Iowa plan doesn’t work for one reason – it keeps politicians involved in the process. He said his group’s plan would exclude politicians from the map-drawing process entirely. He noted a Democrat and a Republican who sat on the redistricting commission that drew the current maps are running unopposed in November.
