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Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Redistricting competition starts Tuesday - $5,000 in prizes at stake
Three groups favoring redistricting reform on Tuesday officially launched the 2011 Ohio Redistricting Competition.
The competition allows Ohio citizens to draw district lines for U.S. House districts and the Ohio House and the Ohio Senate, based on the 2010 census.
Click here to go to www.drawthelineohio,org to find out how to participate.
Besides giving participants a chance to win $5,000 in cash prizes, the goal is to persuade the Apportionment Board and legislature to draw districts that serve all Ohioans, not just the interests of political parties, speakers at a Tuesday press conference said. The board draws state legislative districts and the legislature draws U.S. House districts.
The groups supporting the competition are: The League of Women Voters of Ohio Education Fund; the Midwest Democracy Network and Ohio Citizen Action.
“Redistricting matters because it affects every aspect of our democracy…every aspect of our government,” said Dan Tokaji, an elections law expert and professor at the Mortiz College of Law at the Ohio State University.
Plans will be judged on four criteria:
Preserving county boundaries.
Compactness
Competitiveness
Representational fairness - to encourage plans in which the number of districts favoring each party reflects statewide political balance.
Start of the competition comes a day before the first of five hearings on congressional redistricting by House and Senate members meeting together. The legislature, controlled by Republicans, will draw 16 new Ohio U.S. House districts. The legislation must be signed by Gov. John Kasich, also a Republican.
Ohio now has 18 U.S. House seats but is losing two because of national population shifts.
The Apportionment Board, also controlled by Republicans, will draw 99 new Ohio House districts and 33 new Ohio Senate districts. The board is expected to start meeting the first week in August, said Rob Nichols, spokesman for Kasich.
Members of the board are: Kasich; Republican Secretary of State Jon Husted; Republican Auditor Dave Yost and a member of the legislature from each party.
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TweetUPDATED - Cincinnati chamber backs SB 5- SB 5 repeal backers say they’ll qualify for ballot - 32,439 valid signatures in Montgomery County
We Are Ohio, the group pushing for repeal of Senate Bill 5, has announced that preliminary results from Ohio’s 88 county boards of elections show there are enough valid signatures to get the issue on the Nov. 8 ballot.
In Montgomery County, 32,439 of the 45,742 signatures from registered voters - 76.8 percent - were found to be valid for the referendum on legislation restricting public employee bargaining rights, Betty Smith, deputy director of the board of elections said Tuesday. We Are Ohio wants to repeal SB 5.
Meanwhile, Building a Better Ohio, the campaign formed to support Senate Bill 5, announced Tuesday, that the Cincinnati USA Regional Chamber of Commerce, has officially announced its support for the law and opposition to a repeal. The Dayton Area Chamber of Commerce earlier took a similar position.
“We recognize that this change is not without discomfort, but this reform is long overdue,” Ellen van der Horst, president and CEO of the Cincinnati USA Regional Chamber said in a press release.
We Are Ohio officials expressed confidence the referendum would make the ballot.
“Based on preliminary results from 63 of Ohio’s 88 counties, We Are Ohio enthusiastically reports to our nearly 1.3 million supporters who signed the petition, that the repeal of SB 5 will be on the ballot in November,” Melissa Fazekas, We Are Ohio spokeswoman, said in a press release.
“Current county board results indicate more than 800,000 valid signatures and that the 3% threshold has been surpassed in all 63 counties that have reported thus far.”
To qualify, 231,147 signatures - 6 percent of the vote in the 2010 governor’s race - must be valid. Also, the total must include signatures equal to 3 percent of the vote in the 2010 governor’s race in 44 of the 88 counties.
Secretary of State Jon Husted has until July 26 to confirm the number of valid signatures. If there are not enough, the group has an additional 10 days to gather more.
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