In a state considered a toss-up in presidential and other statewide elections, maps drawn by Republicans strongly favor the GOP candidates.
The maps split counties, municipalities, and even townships and villages, creating odd shapes and unusual pairings.
“In effect, the Republicans have conceded a number of districts to the Democrats in the process of drawing districts favorable to GOP candidates,” said John Green, director of the Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at the University of Akron.
Green said Democrats have done the same thing when they controlled the process, although that hasn’t happened since 1980.
“In the past, when Democrats have controlled the apportionment board, they drew maps that were highly favorable to their candidates,” Green said. “So there is good reason to expect that if the Democrats were now in control, they would draw a similarly partisan map.”
The board, which consists of four Republicans and one Democrat, is scheduled today to approve the maps it unveiled last Friday.
The Daily News analysis found that 11 of the proposed new House districts are packed 3-1 with Democratic voters, while no Republican districts have that strong a ratio. By densely packing Democrats, Republicans have sacrificed those seats in favor of more safe districts elsewhere. As a result, Republicans hold at least a 10-point political advantage in 32 districts and at least a five-point advantage in 19. Democrats, on the other hand, have more than 10-point advantages in 22 districts and have six that lean their way by five points or more. Twenty can be considered competitive, meaning they lean less than five percentage points toward either party.
A similar pattern was found in the 33 Ohio Senate Districts, where 17 districts are strongly Republican or lean that way by more than five percentage points, while nine districts are safely Democratic or lean that way. Only seven are competitive.
House Speaker William Batchelder, said the districts are fair. “In the northeast part of the state, there are a bunch of districts that are in position to have Democrats elected without question,” said Batchelder, R-Medina. “My sense is that based upon the districts previously ... they are fair and equitable.”
Batchelder said the board “very closely” followed the Voting Rights Act, doubling the number of House districts that are more than 50 percent African-American voters.
Batchelder conceded, however, that the new map favors Republicans. “I would say that’s probably right, but not unfairly so,” he said.
The newspaper’s analysis uses the Republican partisan index calculated by the Ohio Campaign for Accountable Redistricting, from data used by the Apportionment Board. The index is compiled from four statewide races: the 2008 presidential race, and the 2010 races for Ohio governor, secretary of state and auditor. The index calculates the percentage of Republican voters in each district.
Critics concede that if Democrats were running the Apportionment Board — comprised of the governor, secretary of state, auditor and one leader of each party from the state legislature — the same thing would happen the other way. It’s the Ohio system, they say, that’s at fault.
Dan Tokaji, a professor at the Moritz College of Law at Ohio State University, called the map “a classic partisan gerrymander.”
“They’ve packed Democrats tightly into a few districts and given Republicans a solid majority in most of the rest,” said Tokaji, an expert in election law and an advocate for redistricting reform.
But, he said, Democrats have been “as guilty at gerrymandering in the past.”
“Democratic oxes are being gored now,” Tokaji said. “This should teach us all that we need redistricting reform. We need to put control in the hands of people without a vested interest in the result.”
Districts in the Dayton region mimic the statewide pattern. Of the 14 new House districts, only one, the 39th District currently held by Clayton Luckie, D-Dayton, is safely Democratic — by a 4-1 margin. One other, the 43rd, held by Roland Winburn, D-Harrison Twp., balances the parties’ voters 50.5 percent Democratic to 49.5 percent Republican.
All the rest are safely Republican by 10 percentage points or more.
In the six local Senate districts, only one is now competitive, the 5th District, currently held by Bill Beagle, R-Tipp City. The new fifth is balanced slightly in favor of Democrats, 51.4 percent to 48.6 percent. The other five districts give Republicans at least a 10 percentage-point edge on the GOP partisan index.
“What was done in Montgomery County is really kind of a microcosm,” said Jim Slagle, manager of the Ohio Campaign for Accountable Redistricting, a coalition of 25 Ohio organizations that support more competitive elections in the state. “There’s been an effort to pack the Democrats into a limited number of districts. That’s really what you’ve seen, increasing the packing (of Democrats) and then making more safe Republican seats.”
Mark Owens, chairman of the Montgomery County Democratic Party, said he is “disgusted” with the way Republicans have drawn the maps.
The Republican plan breaks up local government boundaries more than 250 times, he said. The Democrats put out a map that had 100 fewer fragments of local communities in different districts.
“They went out of their way to do it,” Owens said of the Republican map makers, “basically breaking up cities, and especially villages and townships, which is pretty amazing. When you have to go in and break up townships and villages in order to write things your way, there’s something wrong.
“Trotwood is not that big a city, and they couldn’t figure out a way to keep that intact.”
About the Author