By CELESTE BAUMGARTNER

Ohio Correspondent

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Seventy-five percent of Ohioans voted earlier this month to pass State Issue 1 for Congressional redistricting reforms. There was no organized opposition to the amendment, said Jen Miller, executive director of the League of Women Voters of Ohio (LWVO).

The amendment will mandate bipartisan approval for 10-year Congressional maps, institute strict anti-gerrymandering criteria if the parties can’t agree and require transparency and opportunities for input, including public hearings and citizen map submissions, LWVO stated. New maps, based on data from the 2020 election, will come into effect in 2022.

District lines are redrawn every 10 years following completion of the U.S. Census. The federal government stipulates that districts must have nearly equal populations and must not discriminate by race or ethnicity.

Before this Ohio had no constitutional rules about redistricting, said Republican state Sen. Matt Huffman of Lima, who introduced the reform. Instead, redistricting was a process that was controlled by the legislature from time to time.

“It was difficult for guidance, and because of that there was a huge difference in how the maps were drawn, depending every 10 years on who was doing it and the climate,” he said. “The second part was to ensure some minority buy-in to the process; that is consistent with the rest of our constitution where the majority gets to decide, but there are also minority rights.”

This has been a problem since Ohio became a state, Huffman said. During one period in the state’s history, 40 years went by without redistricting the map because state legislators couldn’t agree.

“Every 10 years there are always fights and lawsuits and ballot initiatives,” he explained. “It was time to bring all of that to a head. Let's get a system with which most people, not everybody, but most people would agree. Over 75 percent agreed on the ballot.”

Another problem was that even within parties, powerful influences or legislators managed to get benefits for their community in the map drawing process. “It is not just party versus party but within the party, community versus community and elected official versus elected official.”

For those kinds of reasons and more, the LWVO has backed a redistricting effort in Ohio, Miller said. They had hundreds of thousands of signatures of individuals asking for reform, and that is what encouraged legislators to take up the issue.

“Now there are a lot of common-sense provisions that need to be implemented during mapmaking, including keeping as many political subdivisions together as possible, not splitting counties, village or towns to favor one party or another,” she said.

“This amendment also requires both parties to work together to draw the map. Most important, Issue1 would require that the process be very transparent, that the public can comment on draft maps and be a part of the process throughout.”

Many Ohio groups, including the Ohio Farm Bureau Federation (OFBF), came out in support of Issue 1.

“Our members are very interested all aspects of having an effective government that serves the needs of Ohioans,” said Joe Cornely, senior director of OFBF corporate communications. “Our main thought process is that if we can get this redistricting done, politics in Ohio will become more collaborative.”

Still, several lawmakers voted against the plan, according to Jackie Borchardt of Cleveland.com. Democratic state Rep. Alicia Reece, of Roselawn said it didn’t go far enough to protect voting rights, while GOP Rep. Tom Brinkman of Mount Lookout said it went too far to rip the pen away from the party in power; he likes the current system.