CLEVELAND — As Ohio’s plan to redraw legislative voting districts sits in limbo subject to a legal challenge in the Ohio Supreme Court, Lieutenant Governor Jon Husted is critiquing both Republicans and Democrats for what they brought to the bargaining table during the drafting phase.
Husted said neither party to the Ohio Redistricting Commission seemed particularly interested in creating more competitive districts, in a wide-ranging conversation on the 3 Things to Know with Stephanie Haney podcast.
"One of the things that I found from the conversation that was going on was that even outside groups, Democrats, Republicans, thought that their reading of the constitution was that, 'OK, Democrats deserve this many seats and Republicans deserve this many seats.' And that’s balance," Husted said.
"I don’t think that’s what we voted for. I think what we voted for was that, yes, we recognize there are going to be a certain number of Democratic seats, a certain number of Republican seats, but they wanted us to draw more competitive seats. You don’t see in anybody’s version of the map an attempt to create more competitive seats. Which is what I think the voters of Ohio want more of.
"And I don’t think either the Democratic map or the Republican map met that goal, by my standard. But again, this is a collaborative process. I didn’t have a vote. But I’ve been very involved in redistricting reform for more than two decades. And so, I just offer that perspective as something that if there is a redo, I would encourage maps that have more competitive seats."
Watch a segment from Lt. Governor Husted's conversation with Stephanie here, and scroll down for links to listen to and watch the full podcast
When asked if he felt the current voting districts that have been in place for the past 10 years, which have been determined by an Associated Press analysis to be some of the most gerrymandered districts in the nation, were fair and proportional, Husted stopped short of saying with any certainty whether they were or they weren’t, but did acknowledge that the oddly-shaped boundaries certainly favored Republicans.
"The current state districts were drawn under a different set of rules and those districts were drawn by the majority party. And they were done constitutionally," Husted said. "Certainly they favored the people who drew the map. That’s the circumstance that we’ve lived under.
"We’ve since amended the constitution in the state of Ohio and we went through that process over the course of the last week. It was very contentious. Unfortunately it didn’t end up in a bipartisan vote, which I know Governor DeWine and I were hoping for. But I do think the new constitutional rules had an impact because ultimately even the Republicans in the legislature conceded at least five House seats and a couple of Senate seats toward the goal of drawing a more balanced map."
The boundary lines for the current voting districts map might seem irrelevant with new voting districts on the horizon, but it’s not. That system that Husted admits has favored Republicans has, therefore, helped the party stay in power. And with staying in power, the Republicans have secured themselves at least four more years of voting districts drawn to their liking, under the new system for setting those boundaries.
Pursuant to the new voter-approved process for determining the boundary lines for Ohio’s voting districts, if a bipartisan panel couldn’t come to an agreement on a new map of voting districts, the party in power, which is currently the Republican party, could unilaterally approve its own map that will stand for just four years, as opposed to the standard 10 years between each US census. That’s where Ohio finds itself today.
The map that Republicans put forth earlier this month, however, has been challenged as unconstitutional in a lawsuit by The League of Women Voters of Ohio, the Ohio chapter of the A. Philip Randolph Institute, and several individuals.
If the challengers are successful, the commission will either have to amend or completely redraw the map. For that reason, it still remains to be seen what Ohio’s new voting districts will look like, and whether they will ultimately last four or 10 years.
"We will wait and see what the court says," Husted said. "I have no particular guess on what that will be. It’s a new process."
As for the imaginative shapes Ohio’s voting districts have taken on for at least the past decade, Husted points out that part of that has to do with already existing city limits.
"The constitution actually says you can’t break up communities to some extent," Husted said. "Well, city jurisdictional lines are really crazy. It’s not like they’re built on square or geometrical shapes that we are accustomed to. They’re very jagged lines. The city of Cincinnati, the city of Columbus, the city of Cleveland, these are large jagged lines that go all over the place, so when you try to keep a community together, you have to draw a district that represents that."
The separate process for redrawing congressional districts is running concurrently to the legislative map-making process. Ohio lost one congressional seat due to lagging population growth recorded in the 2020 Census, which will give the state 15 rather than 16 seats in the US House of Representatives for the next 10 years.
Listen to my full conversation with Husted on the 3 Things to Know with Stephanie Haney podcast on your favorite podcast platform, at these links:
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Check out more episodes of the 3 Things to Know with Stephanie Haney podcast at the links below.
