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Home > Blogs > Ohio politics > Archives > 2010 > May > 27 > Entry
House OKs redistricting overhaul ballot proposal
The House on Thursday, May 27, approved a proposal for the November ballot asking voters to overhaul how Ohio draws new state legislative districts every 10 years.
House Joint Resolution 15, approved 69-28 in the Democratic-controlled House, differs from Senate Joint Resolution 5, a competing plan passed earlier by the Republican-controlled Senate.
Negotiations are expected to start immediately with the goal of coming up with a compromise before the legislature leaves for the summer, possibly at the end of next week.
“I’ve got work to do,” said Sen. Jon Husted, R-Kettering, sponsor of the Senate plan.
Husted’s proposal would do away with the five-member Apportionment Board, made up of the governor, auditor, secretary of state and a legislator from each party. The party that controls two of the three statewide seats on the board controls redistricting. It draws legislative districts after each census.
His plan would instead set up a seven-member commission - governor, auditor, secretary of state, House speaker, Senate president and House and Senate minority leaders. A five-vote supermajority would be required to adopt a redistricting plan. Also, at least two votes would have to come from commission members not in the majority party.
The new commission also would draw U.S. House districts. The legislature now draws the U.S. House districts.
Compactness and competitiveness would be emphasized in drawing new districts under the plan.
The House plan would not change how U.S. House districts are drawn.
It calls for Ohio citizens after each census - including the 2010 census - to submit proposals to the Apportionment Board based on: competitive fairness; political competitiveness; communities of interest and compactness.
The board would administer the process but district lines would be determined by the winner of a public competition using the predetermined criteria.
Challenges would be settled by a judicial tribunal.
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By DjKinDayton
June 3, 2010 10:36 AM | Link to this
Both plans are lacking in meeting the needs of local districts. A method of allowing citizens to petition to have their community considered a political district needs to be implemented. That is, if my neighbors and I sign petitions to define our neighborhood as part of a single legislative district, it should be respected by any redistricting board. Any system can be gamed and allowing citizen self-definition of “neighborhood” or “precincts” makes gaming the system more difficult. Both plans are lacking in requiring the algorithms, computer code and final editing methods used to define the districts for the plans be made public. I’m not thrilled with the inclusion of a “state partisan index” because it sounds like an attempt to rig the system to the two major parties (Republican and Democrats). This requirement should be subsidiary to all other requirements. I’m not thrilled with the lack of definition for the phrase “district shall be compact”. My preferences: The Ohio redistricting commission shall consist of the following ten members and shall be responsible for the redistricting of this state for congress and the general assembly: (1) The governor; (2) The auditor of state; (3) The secretary of state; (4) The speaker of the house of representatives; (5) The legislative leader of the largest political party in the house of representatives of which the speaker of the house of representatives is not a member; (6) The president of the senate; and (7) The legislative leader of the largest political party in the senate of which the president of the senate is not a member. (8,9,10) The leaders, or designees, of the third, fourth and fifth largest political parties active in Ohio; The Ohio redistricting commission shall resolve all decisions using a Rank Voting method. Ten or more district maps shall be generated with boundaries created using several different logical methods substantially similar to a computer program or algorithm. All algorithms, computer code, methods, and meeting documentation used to define or revise districts shall be made public two months prior to final approval the plan. The logical methods used will consider local geographical minimum and maximum population densities as its primary method of defining the centers of the first several districts. To form districts, the logical methods used will consider the boundaries of census precincts, census designated places, citizen petitions for cohesive neighborhoods, political subdivisions and municipal wards as they exist at the time the federal decennial census is completed. The district maps will be evaluated by an algorithm to determine the average, mean and standard deviation from minimum compactness. An algorithm shall be used to evaluate the compactness of the different district maps and select 5 final plans best fitting the compactness criteria. The commission shall evaluate and define in writing their opinions on the attributes of the five maps and publish their results two weeks prior to rank voting on the final set of maps
By DjKinDayton
June 3, 2010 9:52 AM | Link to this
In both plans, I’m not thrilled with the inclusion of a “state partisan index” because it sounds like an attempt to rig the system to the two major parties (Republican and Democrats).
By DjKinDayton
June 3, 2010 9:48 AM | Link to this
Both plans are lacking in meeting the needs of local districts. A method of allowing citizens to petition to have their community considered a political district needs to be implemented. That is, if my neighbors and I sign petitions to define our neighborhood as part of a single legislative district, it should be respected by any redistricting board. Any system can be gamed and allowing citizen self-definition of “neighborhood” makes gaming the system more difficult.
By forex robot
June 3, 2010 1:47 AM | Link to this
Wow this is a great resource.. I’m enjoying it.. good article