When the Republicans in the legislature who controlled Ohio’s Congressional redistricting process this year suddenly tossed their map on the table in late September and announced it would be on the floor for a vote in 48 hours, it was clear to most observers that they had violated every tenet of fair district drawing.
It carved out 12 safe Republican districts and four safe Democratic districts in a state whose vote splits close to 50/50 in every election. It created not one single genuinely competitive district. And it split almost every one of the state’s major urban areas into three or four impotent shards, assuring that their interests would be radically underrepresented, never mind that about 3/4ths of the state’s population is urban. It’s difficult to describe the travesties of districts that spit counties, cities, school districts, towns, townships, villages, wards, and even precincts, that meander for 933 miles in one case and link two disparate urban areas with uninhabited beaches in another.
It was clear that the Republican pretense of listening to citizen input at hearings across the state was nothing but a charade, as was the website Draw The Line Ohio, where members of the public could submit maps drawn to specifications such as keeping communities of interest together, not splitting counties more than necessary, and making districts as competitive as possible.
Today we learned just how enormous of a charade they were. This isn’t just gerrymandering, it isn’t even gerrymandering on steroids — it’s in a different dimension altogether.