The legacy of Elbridge Gerry is alive and well and thriving in Ohio.

Gerry, as many students of history will remember, served as governor of Massachusetts and vice president of the U.S. in the early 19th century. He signed a bill as governor in 1812 that redistricted a Boston-area state Senate district into a strange, contorted shape resembling a salamander to preserve and strengthen the power of his Democratic-Republican Party. As a result, the corrupt political process of manipulating election districts to create undue advantages for a political party received its official name by combining “Gerry” and “salamander” into “gerrymandering.”

Today, that sleazy practice endures in the Buckeye State. But its days may be numbered. Responsible and fair-minded Ohioans have an opportunity to eliminate or at least minimize gerrymandering in the Buckeye State with a “yes” vote on Issue 1 in this fall’s election.

Voting yes on Issue 1 would create a 15-member Ohio Citizens Redistricting Commission, made up of Republican, Democratic and independent citizens who would fairly represent the diverse geographic areas and demographics of the state. It would ban current or former politicians, political party officials, lobbyists and large political donors from sitting on the commission.

That’s a far cry from the current unbalanced system in which the Ohio Redistricting Commission comprises seven seats. Two always go to Republican lawmakers and two to Democrat lawmakers in the Statehouse. The three remaining seats include the governor, secretary of state and auditor. With all executive offices in Ohio occupied by Republicans, that system has awarded the party in power outsized influence in district mapmaking. That system, replete with political bias and a desire to keep the controlling party in power has enabled politicians to pick their voters rather than voters picking their politicians.

It also has resulted in GOP supermajorities in the state Legislature and the state’s congressional delegations for Republicans even though GOP voters only moderately outnumber Democrat voters in the state.

A new citizens commission would be charged with ensuring each district has a reasonably equal population and that so-called “communities of interest” are kept together. That last point has particular relevance to voting districts in the Mahoning Valley.

Few communities in the state are as closely tied in common interests than the Mahoning Valley. Mahoning and Trumbull counties long have shared strong economic, cultural, political and social links. In the federal census, they long have been united as the Youngstown-Warren-Boardman Standard Metropolitan Area. For decades, counties in the Valley were united in state Senate and congressional district maps.

In recent years, however, those interests were ignored in the name of political expediency. One of the first priorities that a new and diverse redistricting commission should set for itself would be reuniting Mahoning and Trumbull counties into common legislative districts.

Those working toward defeat of the measure, however, argue that Issue 1 actually would promote gerrymandering by enabling “special interests” on the new commission to control district boundaries. This argument is specious as it ignores the fact that a bipartisan screening panel of two Republican and two Democratic retired judges would choose the commissioners through an extensive application process.

Opponents have been so aggressive in their fight to maintain the status quo that they wiggled deceptive language into the referendum’s ballot language. According to an Associated Press analysis, the language is presented as requiring gerrymandering when the proposal is intended to do just the opposite. Those who rely solely on such language for their vote could be confused and hoodwinked into defeating it.

The Republican-controlled Ohio Ballot Board approved the language in a 3-2 party-line vote and the Ohio Supreme Court upheld the language – surprise – by a slim four-vote Republican majority with all three Democrat justices dissenting.

Citizens Not Politicians, the nonpartisan coalition that proposed the constitutional amendment, has invested considerable time in drafting and promoting this proposed state constitutional amendment. Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor, a leading spokesperson for that group, puts what’s at stake clearly and bluntly: “With this amendment on the ballot, Ohioans have the chance to reclaim their power from the self-serving politicians who want to stay in power long past their expiration date while ignoring the needs of the voters.”

To be sure, a vote for Issue 1 is a vote to restore full and fair participation in the drawing of election districts in Ohio. A vote for Issue 1 is a vote to end decades of politicians in power conniving to preserve and expand that power. And a vote for Issue 1 is a vote that promises at long last to banish the ghost of Elbridge Gerry from the political landscape of Ohio.

Read the original piece here.