“This is a really profound challenge to democracy that we’re witnessing in Ohio. It’s a little bit like the end of a movie, a Star Wars moment here, where there’s either going to be a little ray of hope for real, fair elections in Ohio. Or, if Issue 1 fails, it’s just going to reaffirm that Ohio elections can be decided before the vote even starts,” said David Niven, a professor of American Politics at the University of Cincinnati. Niven underscores what is at stake in November 2024 for Ohioians.
Issue 1, a ballot initiative being voted on by Ohioians in the 2024 election, would amend the Ohio Constitution to delegate the legislative redistricting power to citizens of the state, removing elected officials from the redistricting process. While much of the country is focused on what is sure to be a highly competitive presidential race, Niven emphasizes that the future of democracy itself is also on the ballot for the state of Ohio.
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Issue 1 would establish a 15-member citizen commission composed of five independents and five members of each of the top two political parties, the Republicans and the Democrats. These members could not be elected officials, lobbyists, or political consultants. A screening panel composed of four retired judges would select citizens for the commission. Two of the judges would be Republicans and two would be Democrats. According to the proposed amendment, this screening panel would consider the commission applicants’ “qualifications, conflicts of interest, party affiliation, relevant experiences and skills, community ties, and commitment to impartiality, compromise, and fairness.”
The proposed amendment would mitigate partisan gerrymandering—the redrawing of legislative districts in a manner that provides one political party an unearned advantage over another. Partisan gerrymandering results in districts that have illogical shapes, separating communities with shared social and economic interests and making for less-competitive elections. This issue is particularly salient in Ohio, which is considered one of the most gerrymandered states in the country.
“The bottom line is Issue 1 would take the line drawing power away from politicians and put it in [the hands] of real people. It would take what Ohio has now, which is a hyper-partisan line-drawing process, and create a system that’s inherently balanced with regard to partisanship,” Niven said.
Issue 1 aims to replace the existing Ohio Redistricting Commission, the politician-led group that currently heads redistricting in the state. A 2018 ballot initiative established the Ohio Redistricting Commission with the goal of limiting partisan gerrymandering. This initial reform emphasized bipartisanship by requiring the Commission to include members from both the majority and minority party. The commission includes one member appointed by the Senate President, one member appointed by the Speaker of the House, one member appointed by the Senate Minority Leader, one member appointed by the House Minority Leader, the Governor, the Auditor, and the Secretary of State. Additionally, two Commission members aligned with the minority party must approve the electoral maps to ensure this bipartisanship.
In 2022, the Ohio Redistricting Commission failed several times to produce constitutional, non-gerrymandered maps. Minority party members did not support the Commission’s new maps, which gave Republicans a disproportionate advantage in Ohio elections. Ultimately, politicians produced maps just as gerrymandered as they had before the 2018 referendum was passed.
The Ohio Supreme Court deemed the Commission’s maps as an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander, and no bipartisan compromises emerged. Partisan gerrymandering persists in spite of the establishment of this independent commission.
As a result, the state had no choice but to use outdated and unconstitutional Congressional maps. After the shortcomings of the 2018 reform, activist groups developed the amendment language seen in Issue 1 as a path of recourse.
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The matter of fairly-drawn districts is generally important to Ohioans of all backgrounds, regardless of age, occupation, or party affiliation. In past ballot measures, Ohioans have overwhelmingly voted to mitigate partisan gerrymandering and to create more fair legislative districts. In 2018, 74.89% of Ohioians voted in favor of the ballot initiative that established the Ohio Redistricting Commission. Still, many feel that these past measures have fallen short of providing an ethical redistricting system.
Selma Younes, a junior studying Criminal Justice at the University of Cincinnati, said that Ohio redistricting is in need of additional reform: “We need a more ethical system when it comes to creating these districts, so that way we can make sure that we are exercising democracy in the best way that we can as a state.”
Tim Rankin, chairman of central Ohio’s Franklin County Republican Party, shares Younes’s interest in promoting a fair redistricting process. Rankin said, “I think you want fair representation. You want districts to be drawn in a way that there [is] fair representation. Ethics are always a deep concern.”
However, disagreements arise when deciding how to achieve fair districts. The tension in Issue 1 stems not only from balancing partisan interests but also from removing politicians from the redistricting process. Conflict over the ethics and effectiveness of a citizen-led redistricting process is at the heart of the Issue 1 debate.
Rankin, who staunchly opposes Issue 1, has several concerns about a citizen-led commission.
“These are going to be unelected, appointed surrogates of the politicians who [will] be given a green light if this were to pass. These folks who are going to be put on this commission are not going to be directly electable, directly answerable to the voting public. That’s a huge issue,” Rankin said.
Rankin is not the only Ohioan with concerns regarding accountability. Opponents of Issue 1 are wary of placing unelected individuals at the head of the redistricting process. They cite that, at least with the current system, if a member of the Ohio Redistricting Commission does something they view as unacceptable, the public can vote against them in the next election cycle.
The accountability argument is complicated. In theory, Ohioans can vote out representatives who they are unhappy with. However, in practice the current state of partisan gerrymandering is self-reinforcing. Ohio voters who align with the Democratic Party—and who reside in partisan gerrymandered districts—may feel as if they have no power to vote out their Republican representatives.
“This is one of those impressively circular arguments in which the opponents are saying, ‘If you make this change, it will take away accountability.’ The entire reason for this proposal in the first place is there’s no accountability,” Niven said. “So yes, in theory, the line drawers could be voted out of office, but they’re drawing lines they can’t be voted out of office from.”
Some Ohio voters believe removing politicians from the redistricting process would promote democratic accountability. Younes said, “Overall, I’d want [the redistricting commission] to be citizen-led, because, you know, ‘We the People.’ It’s not working currently, and right now, the politicians are picking their voters, rather than the other way around.”
Cynthia Spargur, a retiree and Ohio voter, shared the same sentiment. Although she aligns with the Republican Party on most issues, in regards to redistricting, Spargur said, “You definitely don’t want politicians in on that mix.”
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Another source of debate regarding this amendment involves the official ballot language the Ohio Ballot Board wrote. For some Ohio voters, the summary language appearing on their ballot on Election Day may be the only information they receive about Issue 1.
Citizens Not Politicians (CNP), the advocacy group that drafted and gathered over 700,000 signatures to put Issue 1 on the ballot, sued the Ohio Ballot Board for what they say is an unfair description of their proposed amendment.
CNP proposed the Issue 1 amendment in an attempt to lessen the impacts of partisan gerrymandering in Ohio. However, Section 2 of the ballot language states that the proposed amendment would, “establish a new taxpayer-funded commission of appointees required to gerrymander the boundaries of state legislative and congressional districts to favor either of the two largest political parties in the state of Ohio, according to a formula based on partisan outcomes as the dominant factor.”
The idea that Issue 1 requires gerrymandering is sourced from the proportionality requirement of the proposed amendment. The actual language from the proposed amendment states that the new system aims, “to ban partisan gerrymandering and prohibit the use of redistricting plans that favor one political party and disfavor others,” by requiring that “the statewide proportion of districts in each redistricting plan that favors each political party shall correspond closely to the statewide partisan preferences of the voters of Ohio.”
In their summary of Issue 1, the Ohio Ballot Board characterizes gerrymandering as any redistricting that includes consideration of partisan affiliation. This would include Issue 1’s proportional representation clause. CNP argued that the use of the term gerrymandering to describe this form of proportional representation is misleading for voters.
The Ohio Supreme Court granted CNP a partial victory in their case in September, ruling that certain sections of the ballot language must be revised. The court ordered rewording of sections related to the ability to challenge the new commission’s decisions in court and the public’s right to exert influence on the commission.
The most contentious part of the ballot language remains unchanged after the Ohio Supreme Court’s ruling. The phrasing that the new amendment would create a commission “required to gerrymander” will remain in the official ballot language in this November 2024 election.
Proponents of Issue 1 find this characterization unfair and inaccurate.
“The ballot language chosen by the ballot board of Ohio refers to this amendment as requiring gerrymandering, and that is a rather extraordinary Orwellian proposition—that a ballot question to put regular people in charge of drawing fair districts requires gerrymandering,” Niven said emphatically. “The way they got there is this convoluted assertion that if the districts should produce results that look something like the way people vote, that’s gerrymandering, when in fact, that’s the opposite of gerrymandering.”
According to Niven, the Ohio Ballot Board attempted to redefine gerrymandering in the ballot language: “They made up a new meaning for gerrymandering. They made that meaning the opposite of gerrymandering, and they put it on the ballot for voters to see.”
Beyond questions of accuracy regarding ballot language or definitions of technical terms like gerrymandering, Younes said the ballot language could confuse Ohio voters.
“I think that for a voter who is not super familiar with Issue 1 and gerrymandering, they may find those specific clauses as a little misleading or a little bit confusing,” Younes said. “When I go in to vote, I know what I’m voting for, but some people don’t know. They’re not familiar with gerrymandering, and they go in to vote because they want to go vote for the presidential election. When they see that there’s other issues on the ballot that they maybe have not done enough research about, I think that that summary is extremely misleading.”
Spargur echoes Younes; she recounted feeling confused herself when she first read the official ballot language.
“The words [are] tricky, and it’s difficult to understand exactly what they’re doing. I’m planning on voting yes, but the way the whole issue is worded, it sounds like you’re voting yes to vote no,” Spargur said.
The ballot language is dramatically different from both what is written in the proposed amendment and what would be added to the Ohio Constitution. How did the language change so drastically? And why did this change occur?
Niven has an answer.
“In theory, the ballot board is a nonpartisan entity. It’s two Democrats, it’s two Republicans—but the fifth member of the ballot board is the Secretary of State. So if you have a rabidly partisan Secretary of State, the ballot board goes from nonpartisan to hyperpartisan, and that’s what happened here in Ohio,” Niven said. “The Secretary of State is very openly campaigning against Issue 1 and wrote language to try to defeat Issue 1. All of this could have been settled and fixed by the Ohio Supreme Court, but it’s also a Republican-controlled Ohio Supreme Court.”
However, not everyone believes this language is incorrect, unfair, or misleading.
Rankin, for example, holds a complimentary stance towards the Ballot Board’s characterization of Issue 1. Rankin credits Frank LaRose, the Ohio Secretary of State, for providing a fair summary of the issue. “I think the Secretary of State did a great job. I think he has proven himself since he’s been the Secretary of State. That’s something that he’s always treated very fairly and evenly,” he said.
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The final question of Issue 1 regards the best recourse for eliminating partisan gerrymandering.
Rankin said people have been too quick to judge the current system. Despite its past issues, Rankin believes that, if given time, the Ohio Redistricting Commission as it stands can provide fair districts for Ohioians.
“I think the system as it’s [currently] structured, from what I have seen in the alternatives, is the best system that’s there. I think there is a perception that the folks involved with the Commission did not play well in the sandbox together, and it came off that it wasn’t a properly functioning commission,” Rankin said in regards to the shortcomings of the 2022 redistricting process.
Conversely, Niven does not believe the current Ohio Redistricting Commission could create the equitable districts that Rankin imagines.
Niven said, “Ohio’s previous redistricting reform was well-intentioned, but it was a spectacular failure because it invested power in people who invested power in people who simply used the process for their own gain.”
Other opponents of Issue 1 argue that it is redundant: Ohio voters have already taken a position on the issue of gerrymandering in the form of past amendments. The official ballot language characterizes the proposed amendment this way as well. The ballot language states that the proposed amendment would: “repeal constitutional protections against gerrymandering approved by nearly three-quarters of Ohio electors…in the statewide elections of 2015 and 2018.”
While the language holds the same partisan twinge as the phrase “required to gerrymander,” only Ohio voters can answer this question of redundancy at the polls.
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Niven predicts the vote on Issue 1 will be very close. He said the success of the amendment is contingent on Republicans not voting as a block.
“When you ask people, [should] regular people draw [districts], or politicians, they say regular people. It’s just a question of how effective the Republican hysteria message [is]. If they can hold their Republican base together, it fails, but they have shown an inability to do that in recent ballot questions. They lost last year on reproductive rights. If people are thinking about fairness and real people drawing districts, Issue 1 can pass. In all likelihood, it’s going to be close,” said Niven.
Issue 1 aims to transition redistricting power from politicians to everyday citizens. In 2022, Ohioans voted in an election with maps that had repeatedly been declared unconstitutional.
In the upcoming November 2024 election, there is another chance for Ohio voters to decide who they want to draw their districts. Time will tell if this new reform can end partisan redistricting in one of the most gerrymandered states in the country.