If you are a Republican legislator in Ohio you might have thought the issue of legislative redistricting died on Nov. 5, when 54% of Ohio voters rejected Issue 1, the Citizens Not Politicians ballot initiative.
If so, your governor wants a word with you.
Your fellow Republican, Mike DeWine, who opposed Issue 1, plans to try to convince you to put another plan on the ballot — this one borrowed from the state of Iowa.
“It is time to take the politics out of drawing legislative maps completely,” DeWine told WVXU, and do it with a method that Iowa has been using for four decades.
So what does Iowa do with drawing their state and congressional district maps that the governor finds so appealing?
It is supposed to produce compact districts that keep communities together rather than split them up.
The work would be done by Ohio’s Legislative Services Commission (LSC), a nonpartisan research arm of the General Assembly.
The LSC would not be allowed to consider party affiliations or election results.
But its work — completed after public hearings where anyone and everyone can have their say — would be subject to review by the legislature itself, which can reject maps and send the LSC back to the drawing board.
RELATED: Ohio Issue 1 goes down to defeat
In the end, it would be elected officials making the final decision.
That is something that could not have happened if Issue 1 had passed. The Citizens Not Politicians constitutional amendment meant just that — that the work would be done by a citizens commission and elected officials would have no say in the matter.
“It does involve the legislature,” DeWine said. “But an argument can be made that the legislature — at least with congressional districts — should be involved.”
After all, the governor argues, elected legislators must answer to the voters at election time.
Catherine Turcer, executive director of Common Cause Ohio and an ardent supporter of the Citizens Not Politicians ballot issue, says there is a flaw in DeWine’s reasoning when it comes to comparing Iowa and Ohio.
“Iowa’s legislature has a very different way of dealing with issues like this — Republicans and Democrats can get along,” Turcer said, “Ohio has brass-knuckle fighting.”
In Ohio, Republicans and Democrats in the legislature rarely agree on any political issue; and with the Republicans having a veto-proof majority in both the House and Senate, Republican legislators get their way by default.
So how does DeWine propose to get this done?
First of all, he said that when the 136th Ohio General Assembly convenes in January, he will ask both the House and Senate to take up a joint resolution which would put the Iowa plan on the ballot for voters to decide.
The governor is not in a big hurry on this.
“I think that the legislature could take its time, but let’s at least start the discussion," DeWine said.
The current maps being used in Ohio were the product of a year-long battle in 2022 between the Republican-dominated Ohio Redistricting Commission and the Ohio Supreme Court.
At that point, the seven-member redistricting commission was dominated by its five Republican members — including DeWine.
DeWine said many times during that year that he believed the redistricting system was broken, but he did vote seven times for legislative district maps that the majority of the Ohio Supreme Court found to be unconstitutional.
At the time, DeWine justified those votes by saying that he was operating under the rules that existed at the time — even though he disagreed with the system.
Turcer said she doesn’t think that washes.
“He’s acting like he was a victim of the system,” Turcer said. “In fact, he was part of the problem.”
The Iowa plan, DeWine said, is an improvement on the Citizens Not Politicians proposal “because every district had to favor one party or the other.”
The Iowa plan, with its involvement of elected officials in the process is the norm in the U.S., DeWine said.
“There is nothing unusual in this,’’ DeWine said. “The legislature is involved in the process of 48 of the 50 states.”
Only California and Michigan have redistricting systems that cut elected officials out of the process entirely.
DeWine, who will be term-limited out of office in 2026, said that if the legislature doesn’t act, he would consider leading a petition initiative to get the issue on the ballot.
RELATED: County-by-county results for Ohio Issue 1 redistricting amendment
“The challenge is that when you do something by petition initiative it takes a lot of money,” DeWine said.
DeWine said he would be open to changes to the Iowa Plan if that would help get a joint resolution through the legislature.
“You can’t say it’s my way or nothing,’’ DeWine said. “Let’s stop this back and forth. Let’s find something that works.”
