The sidewalk bordering voter parking at the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections is lined with signs advocating contrasting views on Issue 1. One sign reads, “Stop Gerrymandering. No on Issue 1,” while another nearby reads, “Yes on 1. Ban Gerrymandering.” Despite both slogans calling for an end to gerrymandering, they urge voters to take opposite actions to achieve the goal, leaving some voters understandably confused about what Issue 1 will or won’t accomplish.

What is Issue 1?

Gerrymandering, defined by nonpartisan law and policy institute the Brennan Center for Justice, is the practice of drawing districts to favor one political party or racial group. In a report earlier this year, the center highlighted that Ohio is one of the most gerrymandered states in the country, with more than 9 million Ohioans living in districts where elections for state representatives are uncontested, districts where either a Republican or Democratic candidate are on the ballot, but not both, or uncompetitive, districts where one party has a disproportionate advantage favored by 55 percent or more.

This November, Ohio voters will have the chance to decide on the future of how district maps are drawn by voting on Issue 1, a proposed constitutional amendment that would shift the responsibility of redrawing congressional and legislative district boundaries from politicians to citizens.

“Issue 1 will end gerrymandering in Ohio by putting citizens, instead of politicians, in charge of drawing maps,” explained Chris Davey, spokesperson for the Citizens Not Politicians campaign, which is leading the effort behind the amendment. 

The proposed amendment outlines the selection process for the 15 member Citizen Redistricting Commission (CRC), which will consist of five members each from the two major political parties, in this case Republicans and Democrats, and five independent members, selected by a bipartisan screening panel of retired judges. 

If implemented, the amendment would require the CRC to draw districts in compliance with constitutional and federal laws. To ban partisan gerrymandering, the amendment mandates a proportion of districts in each redistricting plan that favors each political party to correspond closely to the partisan preferences of the voters of Ohio, based on election data from the past six years.

Ohio’s Current Redistricting Process

Issue 1 isn’t the first time Ohioans have gone to the polls to end gerrymandering. The state’s current redistricting process, handled by the Ohio Redistricting Commission, was established by an amendment passed by voters in 2015.

According to Citizens Not Politicians, the current system is not delivering the results voters expected.Davey highlights Ohio Supreme Court rulings, which found district maps drawn by the Ohio Redistricting Commission unconstitutional seven times. Legislative maps created by the Ohio Redistricting Commission were ruled unconstitutional five times in January, February,  March, April and May in 2022. Additionally, congressional maps were struck down twice, in January and July in 2022. 

 “Ohioans all hate gerrymandering, it’s just a question of how you fix it and the problem with the system we have now, that was passed in ‘15 and ‘18, is that those amendments were drafted by the politicians for politicians, and Ohioans didn’t get what they thought they were getting,” Davey said. 

“Politicians demonstrated that they are incapable and unwilling to draw fair maps in an open and transparent process, so Issue 1 kicks them out of the drawing room” Davey said. 

Ohio’s current redistricting commission is made up of seven members, two Democrats, state Senator Nickie Antonio and state Representative C. Allison Russo, and five Republicans, state Senator Rob McColley, state Representative Jeff LaRe, State Auditor Keith Faber, Governor Mike DeWine and Secretary of State Frank LaRose. The latter three, Faber, DeWine and LaRose, have all publicly opposed the amendment and are featured on the website of Ohio Works, the leading campaign opposing Issue 1.

Opposition to Issue 1

Ohio Works outlines its argument against Issue 1, claiming the amendment would allow “out-of-state special interests” that “want to create a commission that will have virtually unlimited power to spend Ohio tax dollars – with zero accountability to Ohio voters.”

The full amendment text, which the Ohio Works website does not feature, addresses details like budget and accountability.

In terms of budget, the amendment lays out that CRC members will be paid $125 per day, along with reimbursement for reasonable expenses based on Internal Revenue Service rates, for each day they attend meetings or carry out commission responsibilities. The amendment also identifies a $7 million budget for redistricting in 2025 to be appropriated by the general assembly, with the same budget, adjusted for inflation to be appropriated for future redistricting. 

In terms of accountability,  the amendment also specifies how the CRC would operate in a transparent manner requiring the commission to hold several rounds of public meetings in all five regions of Ohio. Meetings would occur before the release of draft redistricting plans, after the release of draft redistricting plans and in the event the commission makes subsequent revisions to a draft redistricting plan. The amendment also outlines that the Ohio Supreme Court would be the only court to handle cases when redistricting plans are being challenged, which any registered elector in Ohio can do, but must do so within 10 days after the redistricting plan is announced. 

Ohio Works also claims that the commission will be “immune to the will of Ohioans,” arguing that the commission member selection process, lack of required qualifications for members, and inability for voters to remove commission members, would create an unaccountable commission. However, voters are the reason Issue 1 is on the ballot, Davey said 

“We had more than a half million Ohioans, Republicans, Democrats, and independents sign petitions to put this issue on the ballot and to mischaracterize it as a partisan effort to benefit one party or the other is not only false but dispiriting because that’s exactly what we’re trying to move past,” Davey said.

For the amendment to appear on the November ballot, more than 400,000 signatures were required from at least 44 Ohio counties. Citizens Not Politicians reports submitting 731,306 signatures from all 88 counties to the Secretary of State’s Office. After certification, the Secretary of State announced the petitioners garnered 535,005 signatures across 58 counties, qualifying it for the November Ballot.  

Ohio Works did not respond to a request for an interview.

Issue 1 and Northeast Ohio

Since gerrymandering often prioritizes partisan interests over the preference of voters, for Northeast Ohioans, that means legislative outcomes may not fully represent their priorities due to the misalignment of voter preference and the influence of partisan maps in the state, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.

 “With the gerrymandering of maps, politicians are in control instead of voters and the ways in which they’ve been able to gerrymander districts so that certain areas and certain people’s votes count less,” said Rev.Dr. Lisa Goods, a Strategy Team member of the Greater Cleveland Congregations (GCC), a nonpartisan, multiracial, and multi-faith social justice group,.

Groups like the GCC have been actively engaging voters around Issue 1. On Oct. 10, GCC held a Battle for Democracy (BFD) action on Issue 1 event, where attendees participated in friend-banking, the process of contacting friend networks about voting, reaching more than 3,000 voters encouraging them to vote “yes” on Issue 1.

“People fought for this right [to vote], this is what we say we live up to as a nation, in fact we go across the globe touting democracy and fairness to other countries, but yet in our states, there is gerrymandering that suppresses, depresses and otherwise marginalizes people’s right to vote,” Rev.Dr. Goods said.

What Your Vote Means

If Issue 1 passes, Ohio would not be the first state with redistricting commissions that doesn’t have politicians in the drawing room. Ohio would join the ranks of states like Michigan, where in 2018 voters amended the state constitution establishing a citizens commission, Colorado, which uses nonpartisan commission staff and Arizona which established an independent redistricting commission in 2000. 

With polls already open for early voting in Cuyahoga County, voters are making their decision on Issue 1. A “yes” vote on Issue 1 supports the establishment of the Ohio Citizens Redistricting Commission outlined in Citizens’ Not Politicians amendment replacing the current Ohio Redistricting Commission. A “no” vote opposes establishing the Ohio Citizens Redistricting Commission and would keep the current redistricting process in place, with the Ohio Redistricting Commission remaining responsible for redrawing Ohio’s district maps. A majority “yes” vote is necessary for the amendment to pass.

Read the original piece here.