Vote No on Ohio Issue 1, 2015

Issue 1 is a proposed amendment to the Ohio Constitution which would change the apportionment process and rules for redistricting Ohio house and senate districts.

Issue 1 does nothing at all about the apportionment of congressional district seats.  This is where the vast majority of the gerrymandering occurs. 

Issue 1 takes the job of drawing the district lines out of the hands of the legislature and gives it to a new board called the “Ohio Redistricting Commission”.  I oppose this because, if at all possible, all of the laws of our state should be made by the legislature.  That is the definition of a republic, which is required by the U.S. Constitution.  Having said that, I realize that redistricting legislation is a special case that deserves special consideration.  It is legislation that must be enacted in order to preserve the state.  But the commission issue 1 describes should only be used as a last resort (that is, if the legislature fails to pass a redistricting bill).  But issue 1 would do the opposite, making the legislature’s choice the last resort.  If the amendment contained enough precise rules to virtually determine the drawing of the lines, then there would be no need to involve the legislature and a redistricting board would only be charged with finding the correct map.  For example, a provision could have been added to the amendment that would say that of all possible maps which satisfy the other redistricting rules, the one that has the least variation in district population is the one that must be used.  But this amendment has nothing like that.    

The “Ohio Redistricting Commission” would consist of the same members as the current Apportionment Board plus two members appointed by the minority party leaders in the House and Senate respectively.  I oppose the addition of these members because it grants a privilege that is based on party affiliation.  George Washington said in his farewell address that political parties are bad for America.  We should not do anything to encourage them.  The addition of these two extra members favors Republicans and Democrats and discriminates against third parties and independents.

 

The amendment contains language that says that a redistricting plan must not favor any particular political party.  Do you really think that the “Ohio Redistricting Commission” is going follow such a subjective provision as that even with two minority party members out of seven?  I oppose any law respecting political party for the reasons mentioned in the previous paragraph.   The only way to prevent the lines from being drawn in a way that favors certain groups of people is to add more objective rules so that there is only one possible choice for how the lines can be drawn.  It is not necessary for any of these rules to take into account the party affiliation of voters.

The amendment contains language that says the districts must be compact.  It does not say how compact the districts must be in order for it to be an acceptable map.  I am in favor of compact districts, but the word “compact” is not defined in amendment and is therefore just as subjective as the concept of favoritism based on political party.  The amendment is not clear about which of these two objectives should have precedence in a case where both cannot be achieved.

The amendment cow-tows to the judiciary.  It contains language that basically says that if the court
(of competent jurisdiction) rules that it doesn’t like anything about this amendment, then we must disregard the parts that they don’t like even if they aren’t really unconstitutional.  The whole process would be subject to this scrutiny, not just what’s being changed by the amendment.  Remember, Jefferson said that the courts are not the final arbiters of the constitution.

The amendment contains basically the same constraints on the how the lines must be drawn in regards to existing boundaries of counties, cities and townships.  Issue 1 has some language that more precisely defines these rules and their order of precedence.  This is the only advantage I see in issue 1, but in my mind, it is far outweighed by all its disadvantages. 

Redistricting reform is needed, but issue 1 does not do what is really needed.

Crooked Lines from Crooked Politicians

The Legislature and the Apportionment Board have worked together produce this horribly crooked map (above left) for the congressional districts in Ohio.  You can expect crooked lines to be drawn by crooked politicians. 

I discovered the website “http://drawthelinemidwest.org” which contains the alternative congressional map above (to the right).  Legislation to repeal the current map and replace it with this alternative is proposed by state senator Thomas Sawyer (SB 225).  But there is also a referendum petition to change the redistricting.  I am not sure whether these two proposals are the same.  (A proprietor of the website told me that it was the same.)  The Democratic Party is pushing the latter and I went to my county Democratic Party Headquarters with these and other questions.  I felt like Batman going into the Joker’s hangout, Captain Kirk sneaking aboard a Klingon ship, or Luke disguised as a Stormtropper in the Death Star.  I know that they are the enemy, but so are the corrupt Republicans who drew this horribly gerrymandered map (but many dems also voted for it because it was to their own personal gain, making easier for them to win their particular districts).  But if the Democrats put forth a significantly better (less gerrymandered) map, then I will sign their petition for it, even though I disagree with most everything else they do.

So as I entered the rundown shack where the dems have their headquarters, I asked the lady at the desk if they had the petition to repeal HB 319.  She pointed to a clipboard on a nearby table.  Then I asked if she had a map of what the districts would look like if this referendum was adopted.  She handed me a map, but it was a comparison of the old map to the recently adopted one.  After pointing this out she called for someone else to assist me. 

When I asked this other lady my question, she said that the referendum only repeals the currently drawn map, does not draw a new one, and that legislature would have to pass another bill drawing another map.  But this is false.  The petition says that it is to “enact new section 3521.01 and to repeal section 3521.01 of the Revised Code…to establish Congressional district boundaries for the state based on the 2010 decennial census of Ohio…”  The lady either didn’t know what she was talking about or was lying. 

But not only that, the lady told me that there is nothing wrong with gerrymandering as long as it done the right way.  I told her that I disagreed.  She seemed like she could not even grasp the concept that someone might actually want the congressional boundaries to be drawn in a way that is fair for all Ohioans, instead of just for political gain for the Democrats.  “I just don’t want these crooked lines,” I said (even though that term isn’t precisely the property that I am looking for in a map, but given the course that this conversation had already taken, I don’t think that this lady would have understood the term “compactness”.  Gee whiz!) 

The Democrats, for whatever reason, seem to be making a concerted effort to hide what this petition does.  You cannot download a usable petition off of the internet (you can only view a petition which already has some signatures on it from the Attorney General’s office, which presumably the initiative petition.  It is hard to make out the tract numbers on the back pages, I don’t know where to look up what they mean, and even if I could it would take forever to draw the map myself on a piece of paper from these numbers).  I am wondering why.  They don’t want ordinary people to able find out what this map is, they just want their unthinking base to think that they are doing something good for the party.  If they really cared about gerrymandering, they would make this petition available for anyone to download and distribute and they would provide a map to go with it so that people know what they voting for.  And why are no other legislators signing on to Senator Sawyer’s bill?  What’s really going on here?

If anyone has a map of the districting proposed by this referendum petition or if you can prove to me that it is the same as Senator Sawyer’s legislation, please let me know.  Click here for petition signing locations.