Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine opposes anti-gerrymandering reform heading to voters in November

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine gives the State of the State Address, Jan. 31, 2023, in the House Chamber at the Statehouse in Columbus, Ohio. (Photo by Graham Stokes for Ohio Capital Journal. Republish photo only with original story.)

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine stood in staunch opposition Wednesday to an anti-gerrymandering proposal heading to voters in November that would replace politicians with a citizen redistricting commission, but he stopped short of presenting a competing proposal this year.

DeWine held a press conference on Wednesday, not only to criticize the Citizens Not Politicians ballot initiative, but to acknowledge the process that’s currently in place in Ohio — a process that includes him — doesn’t work either.

“We need to end this writing and re-writing of our constitution, and we must defeat this misguided ballot initiative,” DeWine said.

Asked whether he thought it was possible the initiative headed to the ballot could work, despite his misgivings, the governor said, “No. No way in hell.”

DeWine instead presented his preference for an “Iowa plan,” where Ohio lawmakers would draw up a redistricting amendment proposal of their own early next year, based on the state of Iowa’s.

Iowa has a non-partisan legislative services agency draw maps for approval by lawmakers and the governor. If a map doesn’t get passed by the legislature and governor on its first two attempts, Iowa lawmakers are able to make amendments to the map plan as they see fit on the third attempt. This gives Iowa lawmakers final authority on maps.

In a response issued after DeWine’s news conference, Citizens Not Politicians leader and retired Republican Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor issued a statement saying that the “disinformation from the governor today is insulting to everyone in Ohio.”

Redistricting in Ohio

The governor was a member of the Ohio Redistricting Commission (as dictated by current state law regarding redistricting), so he saw firsthand the process over the two years that the commission adopted six Statehouse maps and two U.S. congressional maps.

All of the maps were challenged in court, with five of the Statehouse maps rejected by the Ohio Supreme Court, and both of the congressional maps ruled unconstitutionally partisan. The sixth map was not rejected by a state supreme court led by new Chief Justice Sharon Kennedy, rather than the previous swing vote on all the maps, now-retired Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor.

During the process, the ORC was nearly brought to the supreme court to answer as to whether or not they should be held in contempt for missing deadlines after court orders to redraw maps (the court never held them in contempt), and the group had leadership who called map-drawing deadlines “a myth” and questioned the authority of the state’s highest court to dictate their business.

The process also saw two independent map-drawers, who were brought in at the behest of the court, but whose suggestions and draft maps were rejected by the commission at the last minute , in favor of a previous draft drawn up by Republican staffers.

“This was a decision that I have consciously made after having watched the turmoil, political partisanship that’s been going on for a long time in Ohio,” DeWine said on Wednesday as he decried the Citizens Not Politicians proposal.

The one thing DeWine said did need to happen in redistricting reform that matches up with the current ballot proposal is a removal of politics as part of the process.

“Ohio should have a constitutional provision that instructs the mapmakers that they can not consider past voting data, that the map-drawers know will lead to a pre-determined partisan outcome,” he said.

He said the proposal set to come before voters would need replaced once again after voters realized they were “unhappy,” and that the new process “will make things much worse.”

“If this ballot proposal were to be adopted, Ohio would actually end up with a system that mandates, that compels map-drawers to produce gerrymandered districts,” DeWine alleged.

The proposal headed for voters after the Ohio Ballot Board approves ballot language for it, would create a 15-person independent redistricting commission made up of citizens, and without elected officials, according to the proposal. The citizens would be chosen through a vetting process done by local judges, and public hearings would be a part of the process as maps are drafted, Citizens Not Politicians has stated.

The main problem with the proposal for DeWine is that proportionality “supersedes” all when it comes to drawing maps and determining Statehouse and congressional districts. Proportionality requires representation based on the voting trends in past elections.

The governor critiqued the initiative for having proportionality supersede things like communities of interests and township/county/municipality lines.

Using two examples of maps drawn with the simulation software Dave’s Redistricting App — one done by “Kevin” with a proportionality score of 100 out of 100, and another officially submitted by the Ohio Democrats — he endeavored to show possible problems with maps that focus solely on proportionality.

He mentioned the “snake on the lake” — a nickname for a northeast district based on its shape — comparing it to a district in one simulation that connected Sandusky and Lorain counties. He said another district in the proposals reminded him of an ice cream cone in its “scooping” out of parts of the area.

“This is what proportionality does if you adhere to it,” he said.

DeWine’s plan

Whether or not the Citizens Not Politicians initiative goes through, Ohio might see DeWine and the legislature attempting to rewrite the constitution again.

If the initiative doesn’t pass, DeWine was resolute in his plan to “work with the General Assembly to introduce a resolution in the next session.”

“We’ll vet that proposal, there’ll be hearings on it, we’ll hear from citizens on all sides,” DeWine said. “And I hope then, approve the resolution to place an initiative on the ballot for voters to approve the way the process should be.”

He said he will ask for passage of “a version of the Iowa ballot language that’s been in effect … for about 40 years now.”

The Iowa system has gone through its share of changes, but in the 1980 legislative session, state legislators established the current process, in which the Legislative Service Bureau, “a nonpartisan bill drafting agency of the General Assembly” is given the “primary responsibility for drawing proposed congressional and legislative districts, subject to legislative and gubernatorial approval,” according to a legislative guide to the process produced by the Iowa Legislative Services Agency, a combination of agencies including the LSB.

The plan requires a first redistricting plan to be submitted to the General Assembly, after which a “Temporary Redistricting Advisory Commission” holds at least three hearings in “different geographic regions of the state,” submitting a report after the hearings.

If that map fails to be approved by the legislature or the governor, specific reasons must be given via resolution or governor’s veto message. The GA then has 35 days to get a second plan to a vote. No public hearings are required for the second plan.

If there is need for a third plan, the process repeats, but this time “the third plan is subject to amendment in the same manner as any other bill,” meaning that Iowa lawmakers can make desired changes directly.

If no agreement can be made or if that plan is legally challenged, judicial intervention from the state supreme court begins.

The Iowa Constitution “provides that the Iowa Supreme Court will likely assume or be given the responsibility for establishing a valid redistricting plan,” according to the LSA.

As DeWine explained the Iowa process, he said the Legislative Service Commission in Ohio would be the non-partisan entity to start the process, but Ohio’s version would perhaps not follow the rest of the process, including the provision that states the Iowa Legislature has the formal passage power on maps.

As for enforcement measures to keep the redistricting leaders in check under the plan he’s proposing, DeWine said “none of that changes” from the process now.

The biggest part of the system that DeWine wants to see in Ohio is the map-drawing criteria.

“The Iowa criteria makes it impossible for someone legally following the constitution to use partisan politics,” the governor said.

He acknowledged Iowa’s smaller population and more compact counties, but said the “basic principle” works in both states.

“Do you want politics in it, or do you want politics prohibited from being in it?”

If an Ohio GA plan “deviates very much” from the Iowa system, DeWine said he “will not be in favor of it.”

Even if the ballot measure does pass in November, DeWine still wouldn’t rule out the possibility that he would push for the Iowa plan to be on the ballot at a later date.

“What I’m not going to say is ‘never, never, never’ will I ever do that, I’m not going to say it,” DeWine said. “What I hope happens is that we can defeat this in the fall … and I will push and I will do whatever I can to lead so that we end up with something that’s better than what we have now.”

He went further, saying even if the legislature does not bring about the plan he envisions, “I will do everything I can to get it on the ballot by initiative.”

Despite his fervor for the plan, DeWine said he would not be calling a special session for the legislature to work on the initiative now, to try to beat the Aug. 7 petition-filing date.

“I don’t have time to go to the ballot, number one; number two, I don’t know that at this late date if there’s support in the House to do that; three, the advantage that you have by waiting … is that we can go through a normal process where there are public hearings and things can be vetted,” DeWine told reporters on Wednesday.

The governor alleged that the Citizens Not Politicians amendment had not been properly vetted, saying if voters understood the proposal, they wouldn’t want it, even if they support proportionality as a lead method in redistricting. The proposal made the ballot with 535,005 valid Ohio voter signatures.

“The idea of proportionality sounds good, it sounds fair,” DeWine said. “However, we see how requiring a map-drawer to draw districts, each of which favors one political party … obliterates all other good government objectives.”

Reactions

The Citizens Not Politicians leaders were unsurprisingly against DeWine’s comments and his new plan.

“The disinformation from the governor today is insulting to everyone in Ohio, and especially insulting to the half-a-million Ohioans – Republicans, Democrats and Independents – who put the Citizens Not Politicians amendment on the November ballot,” said retired Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor, in a statement with Citizens Not Politicians.

O’Connor offered to sit down with the governor and “explain” the plan since, she said, “the governor demonstrated in his rambling and disjointed press conference today that he does not understand our amendment.”

Senate Minority Leader Nickie Antonio, D-Lakewood, who was on the Ohio Redistricting Commission with DeWine when they passed the most recent statehouse district map, said the governor’s proposal “appears to be another eleventh-hour attempt to subvert the will of the people and keep a stranglehold on the GOP artificial supermajority.”

House Minority Leader Allison Russo, D-Upper Arlington, also served on the commission with DeWine through a number of maps, and commented after the most recent map adoption that she agreed to the map solely to take the process out of the hands of the ORC.

On Wednesday, she called the DeWine’s press conference a “manufactured attempt to confuse and misdirect voters from the truth.”

“Republicans are desperate because they know their gerrymandered grip on power is coming to an end, so they’re once again attacking Ohioans’ fundamental freedoms and putting their own self-interest ahead of the interest of the people,” Russo said in a statement.

The governor wasn’t without his supporters in the effort, however. A spokesperson for Senate President Matt Huffman said the governor “is correct about proportionality, also known as ‘representational fairness,’ it is the textbook definition of gerrymandering.”

“It’s important to remember that the current system, approved by more than 70% of the voters, produced a unanimous bipartisan vote that approved maps for the General Assembly over the remainder of the decade,” spokesperson John Fortney said.

House Speaker Jason Stephens posted a statement on X after DeWine’s press conference, saying “I look forward to working with the governor, the Senate and the entire GOP Caucus to defeat Issue 1 in November.”

“Once Issue 1 is defeated, we will continue to work to ensure all Ohioans voices are heard and represented,” the statement read.

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