Ohio Republicans Pass Gerrymandered Congressional Map, Spite Reform

For Immediate Release:
November 18, 2021

Contact:
Brooke Lillard
lillard@redistrictingaction.org 

Columbus, OH - Today, the Ohio General Assembly passed a partisan four-year congressional map that expands the 2011 gerrymander. This comes despite a 2018 redistricting reform measure adopted with the support of more than 75 percent of Ohio voters demanding an open, transparent process intended to result in a fair, representative map.

“When Ohioans went to the ballot in 2018, we sent a clear message on redistricting - we wanted an open, transparent process and a fair congressional map.” said Katy Shanahan, Ohio State Director for All On The Line. “Unfortunately, Republicans have, throughout the entirety of this process, sent Ohioans a much different message: they don’t care – not about our reform, our constitution, or our democracy.”

“When redistricting, map drawers face a clear choice: to either preserve their own political power or to preserve our democracy,” Shanahan said. “The Republicans have clearly chosen not just to preserve but to actually enhance their political power by gerrymandering. They’ve brazenly chosen to relegate Ohio to four years with an even more gerrymandered map than before – a map that shuts voters out of the political process and denies our communities any real say in who represents us,” Shanahan continued. 

“It should be our collective driving purpose to ensure that all Ohioans – from Lake Erie to the Ohio River, from Dayton to Marietta, and from Napoleon to Portsmouth – stand on equal footing in our ability to elect representatives of our choosing. That’s what we demanded in our reform. It’s what we’ve continued to demand throughout the entirety of this process. How shameful that Republicans ignored us,” said Shanahan.

The adopted gerrymandered map does the following: 

1. Favor Politicians Over People: Across the state, the Republican proposed maps are heavily gerrymandered to give Republicans a vast majority of congressional seats for the next decade. Despite the fact that Republicans have won just 54 percent of the statewide share of votes across the last decade, the Republican-proposed maps would give their own party’s candidates a staggering 80 percent of the seats. That level of partisan discrepancy is an affront to our democracy.

2. Dilute the Political Power of Communities of Color: The adopted map undermines the political power of Ohio’s communities of color with districts that masterfully crack them apart from more similar communities or pack them into fewer districts – both of which result in diluting the strength of their votes.
   
   For example, in Franklin County, which includes the city of Columbus, Black communities are packed into just one district, while its Latino and AAPI communities are split into different districts. Black and Latino communities in Cuyahoga County, which includes the city of Cleveland, are packed into just one district while the AAPI communities are split apart into separate districts. The map also splits apart Cincinnati’s Black, Latino, and AAPI communities into different districts.

3. Split Up Populous, Diverse Areas: Each map unnecessarily splits apart Ohio’s major metropolitan areas and their surrounding suburbs, denying those areas the ability to elect leaders of their choice. For example, Hamilton County, which includes Cincinnati, is split into three districts that stretch as far north as rural Darke County and as far east as Appalachian Meigs and Hocking counties. Parts of Columbus, including the Ohio Statehouse, and its surrounding suburbs are paired with Wilmington, which is a small rural town in Clinton County. Lake Erie on Ohio’s northern border is paired with Grand Lake St. Marys in a district that snakes from Lorain to Mercer County on the Indiana border, and Akron’s suburbs are paired with rural Amish country in Holmes County.

All On The Line’s fight for fair maps marches on and we will continue advocating for a future and a democracy in Ohio that works for and serves all of us. We will not stop until we win on redistricting and until they stop cheating us out of the fair process and maps that we deserve.

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