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COLUMBUS, Ohio – Republican Ohio lawmakers have proposed new state House and Senate maps that, if passed, would likely give them a disproportionate share of the Ohio seats, allowing them to maintain their majority without veto power despite new rules intended to discourage partisan gerrymandering.
The maps, unveiled Thursday morning, would create neighborhoods likely to award Republicans 67 out of 99 House seats and 25 of the 33 Senate seats – or about 66% in each chamber – according to Dave’s Redistricting, a popular redistricting website that models likely outcomes based on the results of recent statewide elections.
That would be way beyond the recent historic part of Republicans voting in the state. Over the past 10 years, Republicans have won 54% of the vote in the 16 federal and non-judicial state races contested statewide in the past decade.
According to the maps used for the most recent elections and created before the voter-approved gerrymandering reform, Republicans now control 64 House seats and 25 Senate seats. The GOP’s proposed House and Senate maps would both be less competitive and less politically representative than current maps, according to Dave’s redistricting model.
But Speaker of the House Bob Cupp and Speaker of the Senate Matt Huffman, two Republicans on the committee, said they didn’t know how the cards would break down politically. Senator Vernon Sykes, the main Democrat on the committee, called the claim “dishonest.” Republican legislative leaders also argued that language in the Ohio Constitution ordering cards not to be politically tilted was a goal, not a requirement. So in other words, they argued that it was not forbidden to draw strongly Republican maps if they conformed to other rules limiting how cities and counties can be divided.
“There are a lot of other factors in the constitution, the division of counties and cities, where Democrats live and where Republicans live. So it’s not just a nice little tight image, ”Huffman told reporters.
The Ohio Redistribution Commission will meet at 2 p.m., when Republican legislative leaders hope to hold a vote to formally present the card, which they can do with a simple majority of the seven-member commission, which would put the card on the right track for a possible passage. The legal deadline to approve new cards is September 15th.
Maps released Thursday do not include congressional districts. This work will be repeated separately.
Republican legislative leaders have said they plan to hold additional hearings on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, approving the cards on or near the September 15 deadline. Ohio’s new redistribution system was overwhelmingly adopted by Ohio voters in 2015 as a way to combat political gerrymandering.
The Republican members of the committee are: Governor Mike DeWine, Secretary of State Frank LaRose, State Auditor Keith Faber, Speaker of the House Bob Cupp, and Speaker of the Senate Matt Huffman. Its Democratic members are Sen. Vernon Sykes and his daughter, Ohio House Minority Leader Emilia Sykes of Akron.
In testimony before the Ohio Redistribution Commission Thursday morning, Ray DiRossi, a GOP Senate staff member, said the maps comply with Ohio’s new geographic requirements, which limit how counties and cities can be divided, and also require cartographers to draw geographically compact districts. He did not explain how the cards would benefit Republicans politically, saying staff were unsure.
“We are conducting an analysis of the electoral data envisaged by the constitution. This analysis is in progress. It’s not over today, ”said DiRossi.
DiRossi also said they did not analyze the number of racial minorities in each district, despite a 1986 United States Supreme Court ruling that restricted how minority voters can be distributed among districts.
The new division, enshrined in the state constitution, orders the division commission to avoid drawing cards “primarily to favor or disadvantage a political party” and so that they “closely correspond to the preferences of voters in the country. State-wide, state-based and federal partisan general election results over the past ten years.
The current wording indicates that the commission will “attempt” to do so. Huffman, a Republican from Lima, said he believed the language meant it wasn’t a requirement, as long as commission members say they tried to comply.
“I use the word aspiration, because the Constitution says ‘must try,’ and I guess I don’t know how to put the word attempt as an adverb,” Huffman told reporters. He also captured the word “results” in constitutional language describing the preferences of voters.
“The percentages are not mentioned in the Constitution,” he said. “He uses the word ‘results’. “
The new system is designed to promote bipartisan cooperation, requiring the approval of the two Democrats on the Redistribution Committee for the cards to be in effect for 10 years. Otherwise, Republicans can pass them on themselves, but the cards would only be in effect for four years.
As drawn, the maps make it highly unlikely that the Democrats on the committee will approve them. The map contrasts sharply with the plan proposed by Senate Democrats last week. This map would create districts likely to allocate 55% of legislative seats to Republicans and 45% to Democrats – or close to what historic statewide votes have been. That’s more in line with recent statewide vote totals, but the Democratic map would also create districts that are largely uncompetitive.
“The so-called ‘cards’ proposed by the Ohio GOP are a betrayal of Ohio voters and issues that concern them,” Ohio Democratic Party President Liz Walters said in a statement. press release which qualifies the cards as “gerrymandered”. “These cards are not only unacceptable, they are offensive to the people of Ohio who have voted overwhelmingly twice for fair representation.”
Huffman said the cards could be changed by Wednesday. He said he hopes Republican and Democratic staff can sit down and come up with an amendment that can be passed before final approval.
“Do I think there are any reasonable changes that can be made to the map that was submitted today?” You know the answer is yes, ”he said. “… We’ll just see what suggestions we get over the next few days. ”
Breaking down the Republican plan further, 20 House seats would be competitive to varying degrees, or should be below 10%, according to Dave’s redistricting model, which takes into account the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections and the elections of 2018 statewide. Twenty-one seats would be safely Democrats, while 57 seats would be safely Republicans.
In the proposed Senate map, three seats would be a draw, projected to be 3% or closer, with five additional seats projected as competitive, or less than 10%. Eighteen seats would be safe Republicans and seven seats would be safe Democrats.
Individually, a few Republican senators in northeast Ohio could face political problems because of the new maps. District 29, represented by Conservative Republican Senator Kristina Roegner, of Hudson, would go from a Republican +14 district to a draw, thanks to the addition of additional suburbs in Cleveland and Akron. District 32, represented by Sen. Sandy O’Brien, of Ashtabula, would go from +8 Republicans to +4 Republicans, but would combine Trumbull and Mahoning counties, dragging it entirely.
A morning redistribution commission at the Ohio Statehouse is underway.
This developing story will be updated.
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