Ohio remapping dysfunction should set an example

The Ohio Supreme Court provided a win for anti-gerrymandering on Tuesday, when it rejected a congressional map drawn by Republican lawmakers. Ohio legislators now have 30 days to provide an acceptable map. If they fail to do so, the Ohio Redistricting Commission will be charged with this task. 

Partisan gerrymandering has been ubiquitous during the 2022 mapping period, with both parties guilty. The Princeton Gerrymandering Project grades every state’s congressional map across several metrics, including competitiveness, geography and partisan fairness. 

In Illinois, a Democrat-control legislature drew a map that not only fails across the three metrics, it cannot pass the eye test, with Districts 13, 15, 16 and 17 particularly egregious. Districts are drawn that weave through the state avoiding particular voters to ensure that 14 of the 17 districts are likely to support Democrat candidates.

In Texas, a Republican-control legislature drew a map that fails on partisan fairness and geography, packing Democratic voters into districts around Dallas, Austin and Houston, effectively using the Voting Rights Act to justify their nefarious actions. 

What is making partisan gerrymandering more difficult to execute are the plethora of computational tools available that expose it. Entities like the Princeton Gerrymandering Project, FiveThirtyEight and the Institute for Computational Redistricting all provide data analysis and insights that benefit voters and expose gerrymandering perpetrators. This has also made it easier for the courts to assess proposed maps and keep partisan gerrymandered maps from becoming law. 

The Ohio congressional map situation is a mess. The 2022 midterms will be held with the rejected map, giving Republicans an advantage, with a new 2024 map forthcoming by the end of this summer. What further complicates this situation is that Ohio lost one congressional district after the 2020 Census.

The Ohio situation should be a warning to other states of the unintended consequences of partisan gerrymandering. Voters should be outraged, and the best way to show such anger is to not vote for the legislators involved running to retain their seats, and their power. 

When computational tools were unavailable to expose gerrymandering, partisan gerrymandering was easier to hide and perpetuate. That is no longer the case. 

To level the mapping playing field across the nation requires federal laws to define how congressional maps should be drawn. Whether they involve independent commissions or standards defined by fairness metrics, a common set of principles must be applied so that no one party gains an advantage. Unfortunately, the very people who can put forth such legislation are also the very people who have the most to lose from it.

Such laws would serve both party’s best interests. Most importantly, partisan gerrymandering affects all voters, every Republican and Democrat, effectively devaluing the impact of votes by how maps are drawn. 

Ohio will continue to be under the microscope as its 2024 congressional map is drawn. Court challenges to other 2022 maps around the nation will invariably lead to court rulings that demand new maps be drawn. Such legal actions waste time and taxpayer money. Drawing and defending partisan gerrymandered maps should not be in the job description of legislators, given the obvious conflict of interest. 

In an ideal world, maps will be drawn to serve the best interests of voters. With partisan gerrymandering, they are drawn to serve the selfish interests of politicians.

It is disappointing that three of the seven Ohio Supreme Court justices, all Republican, supported gerrymandering by voting to accept the proposed partisan gerrymandered map. More disappointing is that a ruling by the Ohio Supreme Court was required to stop partisan gerrymandering in Ohio.

Lawmakers are capable of doing better. The question is, are they willing to do better?

Sheldon H. Jacobson, Ph.D., is a founder professor of computer science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is the founding director of the Institute for Computational Redistricting, with a mission to provide transparent approaches for redistricting grounded in computational methods.

Editor’s note: This piece has been corrected to reflect that the 2022 midterms will be held with the rejected map.