Ohio panel OKs new map of state Senate, House districts

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — The powerful new redistricting panel in Ohio approved a new 10-year map of state legislative districts on a bipartisan vote Wednesday.

Muscling through U.S. Census delays and partisan disagreements along the way, the Republican-majority Ohio Redistricting Commission was able to win the votes of two Democrats needed to avoid a map good for only four years.

That scenario stood to create logistic, political and legal hassles that could have muddied Ohio elections into the future.

The 7-member commission amended a Republican-proposed map to incorporate many of Democrats’ suggested changed ahead of okaying the new lines, which are effective starting in 2022.

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The vote followed eight crowded public hearings around the state, where members were pilloried by critics who said the state’s existing legislative and congressional districts aren’t representative. A few witnesses defended the current Republican advantage as fair, given GOP is the state’s dominant party, but they were in a distinct minority.

One scholar put Ohio’s partisan breakdown at 53% Republicans, 45% Democrats.

Ohio is using a new redistricting process for the first time this year that was approved by voters through state ballot issues in 2015 and 2018.

The new system, which is meant to fight partisan gerrymandering, required the independent commission — which includes two Republicans and two Democrats from the Legislature, as well as three statewide officals — to finish redrawing legislative districts by Wednesday. It sets a Sept. 30 deadline for the General Assembly to complete a new map of the state’s congressional districts.

An Associated Press analysis found that Ohio’s maps are among the nation’s most gerrymandered, during a period when Republicans won more seats than would have been expected based on the percentage of votes they received.

Sensitive to the time pressure, data experts at Ohio University’s Voinovich School of Leadership and Public Service, which held the state contract for loading the data into the maps, turned over delayed Census figures they had converted into useful data tools to the state by the end of the next day.

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 for the next 10 years.