The Ohio House and the Ohio Senate have adopted proposed amendments to the Ohio Constitution that would address political gerrymandering: House Joint Resolution 15 and Senate Joint Resoluion 5. Leaders in the legislature including Armand Budish and Jon Husted are negotiating to see if they can agree upon language combining the proposals that could be submitted to the voters in November.
Current law allows one political party to control the redistricting process if they hold three of the five seats on the redistricting committee. This creates a "winner-take-all" system in which one party can essentially double its power in the state legislature and congressional delegation by packing voters of the opposite party into a few districts and thus obtaining an electoral majority in a disproportionate number of the remaining districts. The current system also permits incumbents of either party to negotiate "safe seats" for themselves – districts in which the opposing party constitutes a tiny minority – thus insulating incumbents from the risk of an effective challenge.
To change this system the Ohio legislature would have to come back into session and adopt a proposed constitutional amendment before August 4, and the people would have to approve the amendment in November. As noted above, the Ohio House and Senate have adopted competing proposals. The House proposal seeks to eliminate political gerrymandering by preventing the committee from taking the voters' political affiliation into account, while the Senate proposal attempts to do so by requiring broad bipartisan support for any plan. The principal differences between HJR 15 and SJR 5 are as follows:
1. Under the House proposal, the redisricting committee will oversee a public competition that would invite members of the public to submit redistricting plans. In 2009 the Secretary of State's office conducted a public competition to develop fair redistricting plans, the results of which may be accessed here. Under the Senate proposal a bipartisan committee would draft redistricting plans, and no plan could be adopted without a supermajority vote, thus requiring a broad consensus before redistricting could occur.
2. Like the redistricting system used in Iowa, the House proposal identifies specific criteria such as proportionality, competitiveness, compactness, and contiguity that any redistricting plan must satisfy; the Senate proposal recommends but does not require the commission to take various criteria into account;
3. The House proposal creates a special tribunal to review the draft selected in the competition; the Senate proposal retains the power to review the plans in the Ohio courts. Neither proposal would allow a court or tribunal to draw up a plan, but only to veto plans that are not compliant with the law. (Ultimately, of course, if the commission or the state legislature fails to adopt a redistricting plan, the courts will no choice but to design one.)
4. The House proposal applies only to districts in the House and Senate of the Ohio Legislature; the Senate proposal applies to state legislative districts and congressional districts.
Even if the House and Senate agree on a constitutional amendment, there is no guarantee that voters will approve it. In 2005 the people of the State of Ohio rejected a proposed constitutional amendment reforming the redistricting process by a vote of 71% to 29%. Here are links to news reports and several other sources of information about this matter.
1. "Redistricting Reform Stalls in Legislature," by Jim Siegel, Columbus Dispatch, June 4, 2010
2. "Lawmakers Whiff on Redistricting Reform: Will They Try Again," by William Hershey, Dayton Daily News, June 5, 2010
3. Brennan Center for Justice "Analysis of Ohio's Redistricting Amendments: HJR 15 and SJR 5"
4. A statement from the office of Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner "Ohio Redistricting Competition Partners Announce Competition Winners," June 18, 2009.
5. A report from FairVote.org on the ballot initiative that was defeated by Ohio voters in 2005.
6. The website http://moritzlaw.osu.edu/electionlaw/topics/index.php?ID=49, an excellent source on election law at Ohio State University.
In the next post I will describe the public competition that was hosted by the Secretary of State's office in 2009 to draw election districts that are fair and nonpartisan.
