Ohio’s Map-Making Merry-Go-Round

The Buckeye State is stuck in a Sisyphean cycle of court fights over gerrymandered maps, despite past reform.

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MANSFIELD, Ohio—A crowd of around 200 mingled in a spacious ballroom for Richland County Republican Party’s Lincoln Day Dinner earlier this month. Guests sporting red dresses or red ties chatted about the contentious GOP Senate primary in the state and local party politics at tables draped in white cloth and topped with tiny American flags. Rep. Jim Jordan gladhanded his way around the room.

“We got our district, we’re gonna run,” Jordan told The Dispatch in response to a question about his state’s redistricting merry-go-round.

For a time, it was not at all certain whether Jordan’s congressional primary—or other statewide primaries—would continue as scheduled on May 3.

That’s because the Ohio Redistricting Commission, a Republican-dominated body, is in a months-long standoff with the state Supreme Court. Since last September, the commission—and Ohio lawmakers—have voted to approve four different maps submitted by the commission. But each time, the state Supreme Court has rejected them as unconstitutional. 

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  1. Avatar photo
    Sad Trombone

    Trying to take partisanship out of redistricting is as utopian a trying to take $$$ out of campaign finance. These supposedly non-partisan, middle of the road commissions will inevitably end up as non-partisan as NPR or documentaries shown on PBS - they will be dominated by the woke nomenklatura and drive the Trumpkin Republicans into another conspiratorial spasm.

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    Ohio Gas Hog

    Know I'm a little late in reading, but glad I did. I live in Ohio and keep up, as best I can, on the ins and outs of this redistricting saga but to tell the truth, I'm sick and tired of it. This was great piece and answered some of the questions I still had about it. Thanks.

    Ohio, like the US in general, is a very polarized state with like minded political people living in the same areas. We have Red, Very Red, Blue, Very Blue geographic areas. I think the only way to get a truly equitable map is to cut the state up completely so if I live in rural western Ohio, I may be in the same district as someone living in the north east portion of the state. Not possible, is it?

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    Rjosephpaquette

    Also would like to add, expanding the House, by adding seats, would also lower the temperature of the redistributing. (And, yes, this would also take away Jonah’s spoon; the banging on the high chair is getting loud).

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    DougCLE

    The Ohio legislature GOP was MAGA before it was cool. They have long been Exhibit A that “Republican =/= Conservative”. I can’t begin to count the number of times they have abandoned conservative principles when they became inconvenient. They constantly run roughshod over Ohio’s municipal home rule principle, so much so that it’s almost meaningless at this point, while **at the same time** complaining about federal overreach.

    As I said elsewhere on this page: my vote doesn’t matter, because thanks to them, I will always be locked into a solid blue district, but I wouldn’t vote for them if I could.

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    Wilhelm

    Good reporting, Harvest. The focus started narrowly with the Buckeye debacle. But it also had some breadth, explaining what was going on nationally. Thank you.

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    Scarlette Tarte

    Completely unprincipled power politics could not be played until a mass of people was available who were free of all principles and so large numerically that they surpassed the ability of state and society to take care of them.

    The fact that this mob could be used only by imperialist politicians and inspired only by racial doctrines made it appear as though imperialism alone were able to settle the grave domestic, social, and economic problems of modern times.

    — Hannah Arendt. The Origins of Totalitarianism. 1967. iBooks.

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    BC Powers

    I love the America and I love our democracy, every bit of the good, bad and ugly. I take pride in living in a country that tries to build a self-sustaining democracy in a world of selfish people willing to subordinate their neighbors for money and power. This article has me wondering if the "people" want to maintain a government that exists to advance (all) the people's interests or the one faction's interests. Pluralistic democracy is messy and leaves many frustrated, but I don't want a government run by one party, even if I have affinity for that party. No story I've ever read ends well when one party or faction controls all the levers of government. I hope this story has a happy ending.

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      Scarlette Tarte

      It won't. You are whistling past the graveyard

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    The History Nerd

    Gerrymandering is something that needs to go. Leaving it in the hands of politicians who have a stake in the way that the maps are is just a terrible idea. It's poisoning the well of our politics by incentivizing base-first appeals. I wish the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional when they heard that case on it a few years ago. It and the current primary system(I think Alaska and Maine have the right idea with the ranked-choice structure) are the two biggest reforms that need to be made to bring about a discourse that is back to being about issues, in my opinion.

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    CynthiaW

    You shouldn't have eaten those Lucky Charms, Governor DeWine.

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  10. Acre00

    Redistricting is a fundamentally political act. There is no truly right answer, only trade offs. It's the exact type of question the legislature is set up to answer, and it is folly to ask the legal system to answer it. This business in Ohio shows just that.

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