Ohio Redistricting Prep: The State Constitution

This post is Part 2 in a series. Read Part 1 here.

Ohio politicians have officially begun the process of redrawing our state’s district lines.

This matters, because Ohio’s Republican leaders are rumored to be rigging the lines to hand President Trump two more unearned seats in Congress (rigging district lines is known as “gerrymandering”).

You’re probably thinking, “Didn’t we vote on this? Didn’t we ban gerrymandering??”

The answer is yes. Yes we did.

In 2015, Ohioans voted to ban politicians from gerrymandering (rigging) Ohio’s Statehouse districts. The ballot measure passed with a massive 71% of the vote. It became part of the state Constitution.

In 2018, Ohioans also voted to ban politicians from gerrymandering the state’s congressional maps. That measure passed with even more support, 75% of the statewide vote.

But Republican candidates also won most of Ohio’s elections in 2018. They won the governor’s race, the secretary of state’s race, and the auditor’s race.

These victories gave Republicans a 5-2 majority on the new “Ohio Redistricting Commission” that voters had approved in 2015 and 2018.

With the redistricting commission under their control, Republican politicians chose to openly, publicly ignore the state Constitution.

The redistricting process took place in 2021. States are required to redraw their district lines every 10 years to account for people moving, dying, etc. — so every U.S. state redrew their lines that year.

In November 2021, Ohio Republicans passed a congressional map that gave their party far more seats in Congress than they’d earned in votes.

Republicans gave themselves an advantage in 80% of Ohio’s congressional districts, even though Donald Trump only won 53% of Ohio’s vote in 2020.

The district map was blatantly illegal, but Governor DeWine signed it anyway.

In January 2022, a bipartisan majority on Ohio’s Supreme Court ruled the map unconstitutional, because it “violated the partisan gerrymandering prohibitions contained in the Ohio Constitution.”

It soon became clear that Republicans’ plan was to run out the clock. They hoped to stall the process long enough that Ohio would be forced to hold the 2022 elections using illegal district maps.

In March 2022, election officials from both political parties asked the state to delay the upcoming primary election. That way, there would be time to draw fair, constitutional maps. But Statehouse Republicans said no.

Then, in possibly their most brazenly illegal move yet, Republicans passed a second map containing nearly all of the same problems as their first proposal.

Republicans argued that they “no longer need[ed] to follow anti-gerrymandering language in the Ohio Constitution,” because the primary election was coming up so quickly that there simply wasn’t time to follow the law.

NOTE — This post is mainly about Ohio’s congressional district maps, but Ohio Republicans were even more shameless while redrawing the Statehouse district maps in 2022. They publicly refused to submit maps that complied with state law and even resubmitted the same illegal maps multiple times. Things got so bad that the Ohio Supreme Court repeatedly called them in to explain why they shouldn’t be held in contempt (they clearly should have been held in contempt).

In both situations, Republicans’ corrupt strategy paid off.

In late May 2022, federal judges ordered Ohio to use Republicans’ unconstitutional Statehouse map in the 2022 election, calling it “the best of our bad options.”

In July 2022, the Ohio Supreme Court rejected Republicans’ second congressional map as unconstitutional, but by that point, the primary election had already taken place. This made it much easier for Republican leaders to argue that there simply wasn’t time to draw a legal map before the 2022 election. And that’s exactly what happened.

In November 2022, Ohioans were forced to vote using unconstitutional legislative and congressional district maps that gave heavy advantages to Republican candidates.

The Princeton Gerrymandering Project gave Ohio an “F” for “manipulation achieving ‘significant’ partisan advantage.”

The result? The Republican Party maintained its massive, unearned advantage in money, power, messaging ability, and influence in Ohio.

COMING SOON — the final(?) post in this redistricting prep series! I hope you’ve been finding it informative!