Introduction
Almost all elected officials in the U.S. represent some specific geographic district. Since populations shift over time, those districts need to shift as well to ensure that everyone has equal representation. So, if one region’s population grows while another one shrinks, we have to redraw the lines to make sure that each state legislative and U.S. House district has approximately the same population.
Normally, states do this redistricting every ten years after each national census. The problem is that it’s possible to draw these district lines to minimize or maximize the voting power of particular groups or to benefit one of our two major parties. That’s what we call gerrymandering. The basic strategy of gerrymandering is to force your opponents to waste votes so they win fewer districts by larger than necessary margins while others remain out of reach.
Gerrymandering distorts representation, leading to legislatures where the partisan breakdown doesn’t align with the parties’ popular support among the voters. And because it insulates elected officials from cross-party competition, it also leads to more partisan and ideologically extreme representatives. And for voters in districts that have been designed to be noncompetitive, it’s frustrating and alienating. In short, gerrymandering is bad for democracy.
In Ohio, this all came to a head in 2022 when the state had to draw new districts for that year’s election. Under the current Ohio Constitution, redistricting is determined by a commission, which is supposed to draw districts complying with certain guidelines, including – and I quote the state Constitution here, “The statewide proportion of districts whose voters favor each political party shall correspond closely to the statewide preferences of the voters of Ohio.”
In 2022, statewide elections over the previous decade had averaged a 54 percent vote share for the Republican Party and 46 for the Democratic Party. But the Redistricting Commission, which had a Republican majority, proposed maps where Republicans had the advantage in significantly more than 54 percent of the districts. So, the Ohio Supreme Court, with Justice Maureen O’Connor as the crucial swing vote, invalidated the maps and sent them back to the Commission.
But the Redistricting Commission kept proposing gerrymandered maps, and the State Supreme Court kept rejecting them for violating the above quoted section of the Ohio Constitution. In the end, after five efforts to redraw the maps, a Federal Court intervened, saying that that year’s election was getting too close for continued litigation over redistricting. The Federal Court imposed one of the Commission’s maps, which the State Supreme Court had previously declared unconstitutional.
And in the 2022 elections, Republicans won 68 percent of the seats in both the Ohio House and in state’s delegation to the Federal House of Representatives, and 79 percent of the seats in the Ohio Senate, a far cry from the 54-46 split the State Supreme Court was looking for. This is why Justice O’Connor is pushing for a new amendment to create an independent Redistricting Commission in Ohio.
The Q and A that follows was adapted from an interview conducted by Alex Lovit, the Kettering Foundation’s Senior Program Officer, Historian, and Executive Producer of the “The Context” podcast.
Alex Lovit: The word gerrymandering dates back to 1812. And one response to the history of gerrymandering might be to say, well, this has been a problem for over two centuries of American history. It’s always been a problem; it always will be a problem. Why should we be focusing on this in 2024? What’s your response to that?
Justice O’Connor: It can be fixed. We can have a solution here. And that’s what the Constitutional amendment that we’re working on right now (would accomplish)…And how is this going to change things? It’s the reconfiguration of what the Redistricting Commission looks like. The name of our effort, our group, is called Citizens Not Politicians. The beauty of having the citizens – the power lies with citizens. And this Constitutional amendment will recognize that and bring citizens into the participation of how the districts are drawn.
The big distinction is that there will be a Redistricting Commission that is made up of 15 members, not the seven members that we have now. All those seven members are elected political actors, both Democrat and Republican—five Republicans, two Democrats. It doesn’t matter if they’re D’s or R’s. They’re all political actors. And the new proposal is for 15 members. There’ll be five members who are registered Democrats, five members who are registered Republicans, and five members who are registered to vote but are from neither party.
So, they will be considered the independents because they are neither Republican nor Democrat. And that will comprise the Redistricting Commission. And they are charged with drawing maps. For the citizens, the important thing to realize is that there will be hearings by this 15-member board throughout the state before the maps are drawn. So, they will listen to the public, and they will be in all five different areas of the state, all the four quadrants around the northeast, southeast, southwest, and central Ohio.
Alex Lovit: So, as you previously mentioned, the Commission will consist of five Democrats, five Republicans, and five independents. Can you talk a little bit about the protections in this amendment to ensure that the independents are truly independent?
Justice O’Connor: It’s not only to ensure that independents are truly independent, but the Democrats and the Republicans are truly nonactive registered Republicans or Democrats. In other words, they can’t be elected officials. They can’t be on somebody’s election committee. Or, someone who goes out and puts up signs and does literature for the party because that suggests that they are active in a particular party, whether it’s D or R.
There would be an application process, as I said. There’s going to be a weeding out. I’m presuming that we’re going to get a lot of applications, and I hope we do. I know we will. And there will be four retired judges to identify the people who would be on the Commission. And they will be assisted by a vendor who will do background checks on the people – once it gets down to a certain number of individuals to be considered—to make sure they are who they say there are and free of any reason that they shouldn’t be on the Commission.
As I said, there’s a list of them in the amendment. And that not only they but their immediate family are not involved in this highly partisan environment. And the same goes for the people who are of neither party. It’s really five people who are members of neither party. And that means that they haven’t voted in either party’s primary for a certain number of years.
But that doesn’t mean they couldn’t be registered, for example, with the Green Party or some other minority party that they’re a part of. It means they’re independent of the Republican and Democratic parties. And they would be eligible to be on – one of those five. So, they’re vetted and given their oaths. And there will be a staff that will be created to assist them. These are citizens, after all. They’re not going to be tasked with doing the ministerial work of how you put together a commission.
There’ll be an executive director position, what in other countries is called a secretariat. They are the support players for the Redistricting Commission. That’ll be a small group of people, but it’s provided for in the Constitution. I should say we should probably look at the funding because that’s going to be one of the things that people are going to talk about: How’s this going to be funded? The criticism will be, oh, this is a blank check for a group of nonelected officials to make these decisions for the state of Ohio and, therefore, there’s no accountability.
And the response is if you read the amendment, there is a cap on what can be spent in this new redistricting configuration, and that cap is linked to exactly what was spent by the old Redistricting Commission, what were their needs, and the legislature. The new Redistricting Commission cannot exceed what the previous efforts were in the cost, so there is a cap on it. It’s not an unaccountable, unelected commission because they do have their guideposts. They do have their limits. And they do have the criteria that they have to conform with.
Alex Lovit: Am I correct that there’s not only a cap on the budget but also a floor to prevent the legislature from defunding the Commission?
Justice O’Connor: Yes. This is a mandatory funding. They have to do this.
Alex Lovit: There have been some proposals for a federal redistricting mandate, most prominently the For the People Act, which would require states to establish these independent redistricting commissions and also includes other voting rights protections and campaign finance reforms. That act received majority support in both chambers of the U.S. legislature in 2021 but was blocked by a filibuster in the Senate. Do you support this kind of national level reform?
Justice O’Connor: I think that it has worked in Michigan. It has worked in other states that have done a variation on getting politicians out of the process of redistricting, so I think Ohio’s going to be the big example of the success of citizens accepting this, and then the map drawing taking place and fair and impartial districts being drawn. But I think all eyes are on Ohio to see if it’s going to work, in other words, if the citizens are going to pass this Constitutional amendment. It’s going to be implemented, and there’re going to be fair districts.
And as a result, we’re going to see a legislature that reflects, and will be responsive to, the interests of the voters. It will pass in Ohio, and I think that we will become that poster child for the national effort.
Alex Lovit: But you’re saying that the state efforts can be allies in the national efforts rather than [seeing those things] as opposed to each other.
Justice O’Connor: Yes. Absolutely.
Alex Lovit: Some argue that there’s kind of this stalemate where blue states are mostly gerrymandered for the Democratic Party and red states are mostly gerrymandered for the Republican Party, and neither side can afford to unilaterally disarm. What would you say to an Ohio Republican who says, “Yeah, our current system isn’t exactly fair, but we need to balance out the Democratic gerrymander in Maryland”?
Justice O’Connor: I’d say no, we don’t [laughs]. Who says we have to do that? I mean, we’ve got to balance out? No. Let’s have everybody do a fair system of selecting the members for their House and Senate, legislature in their states, and the [congressionals]. Again, we can’t help but have an improved system. I mean, [laughs] look at the people and look at the way it’s been operating over the last years in Washington. We can’t help but have a better system than what we’ve got.
And so there is no rationale that, oh, we’ve got to balance out Maryland, and we’ve got to balance out New York. There’s no mandate that we have to be gerrymandered in our state so that we can be in the Republican or the Democratic column. You let the chips fall where they may. And that’s what this whole process is, isn’t it? Elections are about letting the chips fall where they may and do it fairly. And that’s all we ask. And that’s all the public wants.
Alex Lovit: You’ve been affiliated with the Republican Party throughout your career, but you’ve recently faced criticism from the Ohio GOP over this redistricting issue. You’ve also been critical of Donald Trump. What is your current relationship with the Republican Party, and do you think that some in the party aren’t letting the chips fall where they may or prioritizing partisan advantage of principles of democratic accountability?
Justice O’Connor: The concept of let the chips fall where they may and let’s have fair and equal districts, and let’s do the will of the people—I think it’s been demonstrated time and time again that that’s not the motivation of the majority of the members of our legislature and the leadership – the Republican leadership in Ohio. That’s just a fact. Now my relationship with the Republican Party – I’m a registered Republican. I’m not a Donald Trump Republican. I never could be or would be. I am a moderate Republican who sees social justice as being one of the obligations we as a society must have.
And I don’t care whether you’re a D or an R or an independent. People have to embrace social justice and the recognition of the shortcomings in our system and how we can fix it and how we do it because we’re public servants, and we’re there to make the existence of the public better in any way that we can. And that includes inserting fairness and nonpartisan interest in every effort that we can in order to better things for the citizens of Ohio.
Citizens of Ohio don’t care whether, for example, a Republican or a Democrat runs the Bureau of Motor Vehicles. Let me give you an example. There’s a system called Old Plates, if you’ve used that to renew your license plates, right? It’s so easy to do. It’s not time-consuming. And it saves on both manpower at the Bureau of Motor Vehicles, and it allows the citizen to do it, get it over with, and you’re going to get your sticker in the mail. What could be easier?
Does anybody care if that’s a Republican or Democratic administration that came up with that? I will tell you that that happened when I was Public Safety Director and Bureau of Motor Vehicles was one of my divisions, and this is something that I pushed to have. Now again, it’s not an R or a D thing. It’s good government. Isn’t that what everybody wants? They want good government. They don’t want the legislature to dictate, but where it’s appropriate for the legislature to enact laws, those laws should be fair and take into consideration the interests that need to be taken into consideration before the laws are made.
Alex Lovit: So, for listeners in Ohio, what can they do to support this amendment? And for listeners outside of Ohio who may be concerned about these issues of redistricting and gerrymandering, do you have any general advice for what they can do to promote a fairer system?
Justice O’Connor: Citizens of Ohio, there’re several things I would recommend. Please register to vote and exercise your vote and do it consistently and do it in the primaries and do it in the general election. Be registered to vote. And then over the next couple of months, when you are presented with a petition to sign so that the Constitutional amendment that I’m speaking of can get on the ballot in November of ’24. We have to have over 413,000 valid signatures from citizens who are registered to vote, and they have to be presented by July – the beginning of July. And those votes will be tallied, and they will be examined to make sure that whoever signed it is a registered voter in Ohio. (Editor’s note: In July, the Ohio Secretary State’s office certified enough valid signatures for the measure to be placed on the November 2024 ballot.)
What would I recommend to other states? I think the states that have the beauty of a citizen’s initiative, I would say use your citizen’s initiative. Investigate what it is and see what you can do to create a citizen’s initiative for a Constitutional amendment in your state. Unfortunately, there are states that don’t have this. In fact, the majority of the states don’t have the ability to do a citizen’s initiative for either a statute or for a Constitutional amendment.
Their challenge then is to organize outside of the ability to do this and to influence their legislators when it comes to drawing maps but also to be very mindful of their district elections and be mindful of the people who are running. If you’re in a gerrymandered district in these states that don’t have the Constitutional initiative ability and there is a primary, look closely at your candidates there, and make sure you don’t vote for the extremist, that you vote for the moderate Republican or the moderate Democrat.
This goes both ways. This isn’t just Republican. You know, the advice and what I’m talking about applies to Democrats as well. For example, this map – the most recent map that came out was challenged as being unconstitutional. But it was signed, approved by all seven members of the Commission, including the two Democratic members. Again, there’s no independent thought that Democrats haven’t cornered the market on that. There’s politics involved in what they do as well.
If your district’s safe and the districts of your friends are safe, yeah, okay, you’ll vote on that map. Again, that’s not what it’s supposed to be.
This Q&A was adapted from an episode of The Context podcast – a biweekly program of long-form interviews about democracy with political leaders, academic experts, and practitioners. In addition to Justice O’Connor, other guests have included Steven Levitksy, James Comey, and Kimberlé Crenshaw. More information, and links to listen and subscribe, are available here, or search “Kettering context” in your podcast app.
The Kettering Foundation is a nonpartisan, nonprofit, operating foundation engaged in research for the improvement of society. Founded in 1927 by the inventor and engineer Charles F. Kettering, the foundation’s mission today is to advance inclusive democracies by fostering citizen engagement, promoting government accountability, and countering authoritarianism.
