The Dispatch: Ohio's Map-Making Merry-Go-Round
ERN was asked to offer input on the state of U.S. redistricting in this article for The Dispatch, written by Harvest Prude. Photo by Oz Seyrek on Unsplash.
[...]“It looks like the seat advantage coming out of redistricting this cycle is that neither party has as near as much advantage as one party or the other party has had in other cycles,” Kevin Johnson, executive director of the Election Reformers Network, told The Dispatch.
Courts have stepped in on aggressive gerrymanders in Maryland by Democrats and Republicans in North Carolina. In other states, litigation is ongoing.
And more states have handed partial or complete control of the process to independent redistricting commissions.
All About Redistricting, a project of Loyola Law School, has a helpful breakdown of how states handle redistricting: 27 states give the legislature control of the process. In three states, politician commissions—with members who hold elected office—control the process. Eight states have independent commissions. Six states have either backup commissions which get involved if a legislature fails to adopt a map by a certain deadline, or advisory commissions. Six states have only one congressional district, rendering redistricting unnecessary.
Arizona, California, Colorado, and Michigan have garnered praise for drawing maps fairer than in previous years and in comparison to states without commissions. Those states also had fewer “wasted” votes, which means votes that did not contribute to the candidate winning. Known as an efficiency gap, the concept measures whether a party had an advantage when it came to seeing votes result into seats.
The success of these commissions, Johnson said, has depended on how the bodies are set up.
“There have been degrees of reform across a number of states,” Johnson said. “The states that have done less well are states that have tried to effectively build half a bridge from control by the politically motivated legislature to control an independent body—states like New Mexico, Virginia, Ohio, New Jersey, New York all did some version of a half of a bridge. And you know, not surprisingly, you drive over a half a bridge, you fall off.”
In New Jersey, state legislators choose commissioners, yielding predictably partisan results with a map heavily favoring Democrats.
Ohio is another state that, according to Johnson, built only half a bridge and kept control vested in the partisan legislature.
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“Bad reform doesn’t mean reform is not needed,” Johnson said. “It just means good reform is needed.”