Ohio voters approve ballot initiative designed to limit gerrymandering
IAN MILLHISER at Think Progress
https://thinkprogress.org/ohio-voters-approve-ballot-initiative-against-gerrymandering-fe8faa527bd0/
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By a three-to-one margin, Ohio’s voters approved a ballot initiative on Tuesday that will make it harder for either party to recreate the aggressively gerrymandered maps that currently allow Republicans to dominate the state’s congressional delegation.
The approved initiative, Ohio’s Issue 1, will create a multi-stage, Rube Goldberg-like method of drawing congressional districts, which will take effect during the next redistricting cycle in 2021. It is not a perfect solution to the problem of gerrymandering, and it is likely to give Republicans a slight advantage in future congressional races.
Yet, for Ohio voters who believe that governments derive “their just powers from the consent of the governed,” the new regime created by Issue 1 is a lot better than the status quo it leaves behind.
Under its current congressional maps, Ohio can hardly be described as a representative democracy. Few, if any, of the state’s 16 congressional seats are competitive, and 12 of those seats are gerrymandered for Republicans. In 2012, when President Barack Obama carried the state, Republicans won all 12 of these seats.
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