Successful government in the United States is predicated on the notion that people who seek elected office will carry out their duties in good faith. Sadly, in Ohio at least, when it comes to drawing the lines for congressional and Statehouse districts, good faith goes out the window.

Whichever party is in power can’t resist the temptation to cook the books and give themselves congressional and state legislative seats out of proportion to how state voters break down by party. The result is grossly disproportionate representation, as we have now in Ohio.

Issue 1 on the Nov. 5 ballot would restore good faith to the mapmaking by ousting from the process the elected officials, politicians, lobbyists or anyone else with a vested interest in cheating. The proposed amendment to the Ohio Constitution would create a citizen commission to do the mapmaking, with safeguards that all but guarantee those citizens would work in good faith.

In short, passage of Issue 1 will end gerrymandering in Ohio. We emphatically endorse it.

Rarely do Ohioans have such an opportunity to improve their government.

True, Ohio voters thought they fixed the gerrymandering problem nearly a decade ago, voting on two different constitutional amendments proposed by the Ohio Legislature. Those so-called reforms created a redistricting commission made up of the governor, auditor, secretary of state, Ohio Senate president, Ohio House speaker and two legislators from the minority party.

When time came to draw maps following the 2020 Census, however, the reforms failed. Commission members, all of whom swore oaths to support the Ohio Constitution, repeatedly violated it with maps that broke the rules. The Ohio Supreme Court repeatedly rejected them, telling the commission to fix them. We ended up with gerrymandered maps, anyway.

The result is lopsided Republican representation in a state that leans Republican but is close to even. Issue 1 on the November ballot would require a citizen’s commission in 2025 to make the maps proportional to statewide voting patterns over the past six years.

Issue 1 is not perfect, of course. No system can be. Ideally, we’d have competitive districts, where either Republicans or Democrats could win. Drawing maps to do that is nearly impossible in Ohio because of geography. Democrats are heavily centered in urban areas, with Republicans spread out in the majority of counties. Drawing competitive districts would require carving up urban areas into ridiculous zones.

Issue 1 settles for making the maps proportional. If Republicans have won 55% of Ohio’s votes over the previous six years, then 55% of the districts will be weighted to Republican victory. Today, we are so out of balance that we have veto-proof supermajorities in both chambers of the Statehouse. That does not reflect how the state votes.

The people who created the gerrymandering want to keep it, so they are telling lies about this issue. In the worst of the lies, Secretary of State Frank LaRose and the Ohio Ballot Board put language on the ballot to call Issue 1 itself gerrymandering. And the Ohio Supreme Court, where the Republicans have a majority, made the ridiculous call to let that language stand.

Let’s be clear: No definition of gerrymandering covers what Issue 1 does. Gerrymandering involves giving disproportionate numbers of seats to one party. Issue 1 requires proportionality.

By ridding Ohio of supermajorities in the state legislature, we can be assured that our lawmakers will move back toward the center, to match the centrism of most Ohioans. A proportional representation will bring more bipartisanship, once a hallmark of this state. It will rid us of the veto-proof supermajorities that have negated the power of the governor’s office.

Ohio government is broken. We’ve lived with the sins of gerrymandering far too long. Republican Maureen O’Connor, the former Ohio chief justice who saw the broken process firsthand, is behind Issue 1. She knows the only way to fix this system is to get the politicians and elected leaders out of it.

Will it work? We can look to Michigan for that answer. Our neighbor to the north went down a similar path six years ago. And its legislature has shown more balance.

We are passionate about Issue 1. Please vote “yes.” Future generations will be glad we made this change.

Early voting in the Nov. 5 election has begun.

Read the original piece here.