Supporters say removing politicians from the process is key. Opponents say Issue 1 will create other problems
BY SUSAN TEBBEN
At an Ohio Issue 1 forum Wednesday, both sides criticized Ohio’s current redistricting system, but supporters of the proposed amendment said it would stop gerrymandering by removing politicians from the process, while opponents said it would create other problems.
The Citizens Not Politicians Issue 1 proposal on the ballot would replace the current Ohio Redistricting Commission made up of seven elected officials with a 15-member commission made up of citizens.
The current commission includes the Ohio governor, auditor, and secretary of state, along with four lawmakers — one from each party in each chamber of the legislature. The 15-member citizens commission being proposed would be made up of five Republicans, five Democrats, and five independents, selected by a bipartisan panel of former judges.
Voting yes on Issue 1 would create the 15-member Ohio Citizens Redistricting Commission. Voting no on Issue 1 would keep the current Ohio Redistricting Commission.
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Two of the panelists featured in the forum played prominent roles in Ohio’s redistricting battle of 2021 and 2022, where a bipartisan Ohio Supreme Court struck down a total of seven Statehouse and U.S. Congressional district maps — passed by Republican members of the Ohio Redistricting Commission without bipartisan support — as unconstitutionally gerrymandered.
Ohio Republican former Supreme Court Justice Maureen O’Connor was the swing vote in those decisions striking down the gerrymandered maps. Ohio Republican Auditor of State Keith Faber is a member of the Ohio Redistricting Commission and has served as its co-chair.
As the clock ran out to produce constitutional maps in 2022, a federal court ordered Ohio to use the commission’s maps for that election cycle regardless. O’Connor was forced to retire from the court due to age. Shortly thereafter she began work on the Citizens Not Politicians proposal.
In 2023, Faber and the other members of the Ohio Redistricting Commission unanimously passed maps that will be used for the election this November, although Democrats said they only supported them because redistricting reform was on the way and if they had voted no on them then the Republicans on the commission would have produced even more gerrymandered maps.
On Wednesday, O’Connor stood in favor of the Citizens Not Politicians Amendment alongside Kareem Crayton, vice president of the nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice at NYU. Faber stood opposed to the Issue 1 amendment alongside Capital University law professor Bradley Smith.
While Faber opposes changing the current system through Issue 1, he didn’t spend time in Wednesday’s Columbus Metropolitan Club forum defending the current process either.
“I’ll be the first one to stand up and say hey, the current system doesn’t work very well, it was designed not to work very well, it was designed to compromise,” Faber said.
At the forum, Faber also acknowledged that, though there was bipartisan support for the 2023 maps, they aren’t without flaws.
“I’m not going to tout the current map because there are some things that we could have done better if we had some clarity on some of these issues,” he said.
And while his reasons for opposition to Issue 1 included the risk of litigation with the new system, Faber said “nobody anticipated the (Ohio Supreme Court) injecting itself the way they did” in the current system.
The court was designated as the final arbiter of constitutionality for the maps under redistricting reforms passed by Ohio voters in 2015 and 2018.
Still, Faber said changing to the 15-citizen independent redistricting commission and the map-drawing requirements in the ballot initiative will only serve to make the system worse.
“This was drafted from a ‘heads we win, tails we win twice’ political ideology,” Faber said.
For former Chief Justice O’Connor, the specter of the current system is enough of an argument to make changes.
“It’s time,” she told the attendees of the forum. “You have the trigger and the trigger was the dysfunction of the current system.”
O’Connor defended against criticisms from Faber and Capital University law professor Bradley Smith that Issue 1 “forces” gerrymanders to create Democratic strongholds in the state through the map-drawing requirements, that the measure would “slice and dice communities,” claims the unelected members of the commission would lack accountability to Ohioans and even an argument from Smith that redistricting is “an inherently political process.”
Faber also brought up the independent citizens commission that was implemented in Michigan, a chair for which appeared alongside state Sen. Michele Reynolds, R-Canal Winchester, in a press conference Tuesday urging votes against Issue 1.
At the anti-Issue 1 press conference with Ohioans against the measure, Rebecca Szetela warned against “a repeat of what happened in Michigan,” where she painted her colleagues on the citizens commission as “unqualified” people who were insulated from criticism and unaccountable to the public.
O’Connor said the Citizens Not Politicians reform proposal did study Michigan’s process as part of a comprehensive review of redistricting systems in the country. She said in formulating Ohio’s process, authors “took what was good and discarded what was not.”
“Yes it is detailed, yes it is specific, and no, it’s not Michigan,” O’Connor said.
Specifically, she said the Ohio plan has a “much more detailed way to make sure that the commissioners are right for the job that they are seeking.”
“We want people who vote, who are good citizens, who have the initiative and the desire to serve Ohio and to serve it so that we can have fair districts where there’s representation that is fair representation,” O’Connor said.
Kareem Crayton, Vice President of the nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice at NYU, said a citizens commission redistricting process “separates elections from power” and Issue 1’s provision against gerrymandering resets that concept for Ohio.
“In a functioning democracy, elections are the power,” Crayton said. “In a gerrymandered system, power is totally immune, insulated from elections.”
In a commission that has to agree across partisan lines, maps must be drawn with that agreement, and the agreement of the public in mind.
“What you see in every independent commission state is more public engagement, more discussion about how the rules should fit together and ultimately an outcome that generally gets broad consensus agreement in the public,” Crayton said.
