COLUMBUS, Ohio — Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine said Wednesday that he will work to defeat a fall ballot issue aimed at remaking the state’s troubled political mapmaking system, and, if it passes, work with state lawmakers next year to advance a competing amendment based on the Iowa model.
At a news conference complete with corroborating visuals, DeWine contended that rules laid out in the Citizens Not Politicians amendment would divide communities and mandate outcomes that fit “the classic definition of gerrymandering.” He took specific aim at the proposal's requirement for partisan proportionality in the maps.
“Now, the idea of proportionality sounds fair," he said. "However, we see that requiring the map drawer to draw districts, each of which favors one political party, with each district having a predetermined partisan advantage, and requiring a certain number of districts to favor each party, obliterates all other good government objectives. They all go away.”
DeWine said Iowa's system — in which mapmakers are prohibited from consulting past election results or protecting individual lawmakers — would remove politics from the process.
Supporters of Ohio's fall ballot measure disagreed, pointing out that Iowa state lawmakers have the final say on political district maps in that state — the exact scenario the Ohio plan is designed to avoid. That’s after Ohio’s existing system, involving the state Legislature and a state redistricting commission populated with elected officials, including DeWine, produced seven rounds of legislative and congressional maps rejected by courts as unconstitutional.
"This is the same tired playbook in Ohio," said John Bisognano, president of All On The Line, a national anti-gerrymandering group supported by Democrats that's involved in the campaign. "Given Ohio politicians repeatedly ignored well-intended reforms in order to gerrymander themselves into power, the Iowa model simply will not work in the Buckeye State. Any proposal that could allow gerrymandering politicians to keep the pen to draw the maps or change the rules is unacceptable for Ohioans.”
The fall ballot proposal calls for replacing the Ohio Redistricting Commission, made up of the governor, auditor, secretary of state and the four legislative leaders, with an independent body selected directly by citizens. The new panel’s members would be diversified by party affiliation and geography.
During the protracted process for redrawing district boundaries to account for results of the 2020 Census, challenges filed in court resulted in two congressional maps and five sets of Statehouse maps being rejected as unconstitutionally gerrymandered.
DeWine argued that it's less important who draws the maps than what criteria the state constitution forces them to abide by. He said he will work with the Legislature come January to put the Iowa plan before voters and, if lawmakers fail, he would even consider working to get it on the statewide ballot by initiative.
Asked why he opted against calling an immediate special session to address the issue, as he recently did to fix a ballot deadline issue affecting the presidential race, DeWine said that strategy lacked support in the politically fractured Ohio House.
A new session begins in January. It's possible that, by then, Republican Senate President Matt Huffman — who has spoken out against the fall redistricting measure — will have succeeded in his effort to return to the House and to win the speaker's chair away from fellow Republican Jason Stephens. Stephens, whose tenure has relied heavily on Democrats, has failed to deliver on several of DeWine's legislative priorities this session.