No new maps as commission ignores court order
The Ohio Redistricting Commission refused to pass new state House and Senate maps Thursday, declaring an impasse.
Republican members said they couldn’t comply with the Ohio Supreme Court’s redistricting demands and the state Constitution. Democratic members on the commission said Republicans simply lacked the will to fulfill their duties.
Now, the Ohio Supreme Court must decide what to do with a commission that won’t follow its orders. The commission and court are operating under a new set of rules, approved by voters in 2015 to curb partisan gerrymandering, so there’s no roadmap for what happens next.
Meanwhile, Ohioans don’t have districts for 99 House and 33 Senate seats – lines that are needed to elect party nominees for representatives on May 3. The commission’s inaction throws those races, and the imminent primary, into even more turmoil.
The commission now faces another tall task: enacting a new congressional map in the coming weeks. Their first map was struck down by the Ohio Supreme Court as unconstitutional gerrymandering.
“It is possible for us to draw constitutional maps and to work together as the court has ordered us to do,” said House Minority Leader Allison Russo, D-Upper Arlington.
Gov. Mike DeWine said the task was difficult but they had to press on: “We have an obligation to produce a map.”
Republicans never proposed a new set of maps. Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose said GOP legislative staff told the commission that it was impossible to produce maps that comply with both the Ohio Constitution and the courts’ orders – a point that Democrats dispute.
The decision to forgo a third set of maps came after an hourlong grilling of Democrats over their proposed maps – which would give Republicans a 54-45 advantage in the House and an 18-15 advantage in the Senate.
Senate President Matt Huffman, R-Lima, said the Democrats’ maps unduly favored Democratic candidates over Republican ones – in violation of voter-approved changes to the Ohio Constitution. He pointed to 10 House Republicans paired in districts with other legislators.
“This map only, not only primarily, only favors the Democrat party and only disfavors the Republican party,” Huffman said.
House Minority Leader Allison Russo, D-Upper Arlington, contended that to align legislative maps with Ohioans’ voting preferences – about 54% for Republican candidates and 46% of Democratic districts over the past decade – some Republicans had to lose their seats.
“If that is the standard is the current set of maps, which favor Republicans, or the maps that you proposed in the last commission meeting that have been thrown out by the courts, … if that is the standard that you are using then yes, some Republicans are going to lose seats,” Russo said.
Huffman also criticized House districts in the Democratic proposals for not being compact, citing one that stretched between Summit, Portage and Geauga counties. One proposed Ohio Senate district jogged from Toledo to Crawford County.
“You’re dividing cities up more than the original Democratic map,” Huffman said.
Huffman said he was sharing concerns about compactness and splitting that the public raised in public hearings held across the state. But Huffman’s attendance at those hearings was spotty; he often sent other senators to attend. Gov. Mike DeWine skipped one to attend Bengals training camp.
That prompted Sen. Vernon Sykes, D-Akron to reply: “I’m surprised that you’re putting emphasis on it now.”
In a heated back-and-forth, Russo repeatedly asked Huffman what constitutional violation he was alleging. In the end, the commission did not adopt the Democratic maps, voting to reject them along party lines.
Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor’s statement during a December oral argument has proven prescient: “If it (the map) is challenged, and it’s back here, this could go on forever.”
What will happen to Ohio’s May 3rd primary?
Without maps, Ohio won’t be able to hold elections.
“We are dangerously close to possibly violating federal law,” LaRose said.
But he didn’t offer an alternative date, writing that lawmakers set the time and place of elections. Huffman, who previously pitched holding two primaries, has since backed off that proposal.
“Nobody seems to like that idea,” he said.
Jessie Balmert is a reporter for the USA TODAY Network Ohio Bureau, which serves the Akron Beacon Journal, Cincinnati Enquirer, Columbus Dispatch and 18 other affiliated news organizations across Ohio.