Measure failure leaves map making in hands of GOP elected officials

This story was originally published by Signal Statewide Tuesday night. Sign up for their free newsletters at SignalOhio.org/StateSignals.

By Andrew Tobias, Signal Statewide

Ohio voters have defeated Issue 1, giving a huge victory to state republicans who managed to turn the public against the proposed redistricting amendment despite being massively outspent.

The measure’s failure comes after a barrage of pro-Issue 1 ads. The “yes” campaign, underwritten by a handful of national groups and labor unions, outspent Issue 1’s opponents by a roughly seven-to-one margin, according to state campaign finance records. 

However, republicans painted the measure as a democratic power grab, releasing ads featuring former president Donald Trump. Republicans also wrote ballot language summarizing Issue 1 that described it as repealing popular anti-gerrymandering reforms passed by voters in 2015 and 2018. Campaigns for and against the measure and their allies agreed the language portrayed the issue negatively and made it less likely to pass.

“Ohio voters spoke loudly and clearly on Issue 1,” Bob Paduchik, a former Ohio republican party chairman who led the anti-Issue 1 campaign, said in a statement.

“Ohio’s constitution is not for sale to foreign billionaires and out of state left-wing special interest groups. Despite democrats’ best efforts to deceive Ohioans into changing our constitution and rigging elections in their favor, the truth has carried the day,” said Paduchik. “We are grateful to our elected republican leaders, the Ohio Republican Party, the Ohio Chamber of Commerce, Ohio Manufacturers Association, and many others that took a stand to protect representational democracy.”

Citizens Not Politicians, the main pro-Issue 1 campaign group, did not immediately issue a concession statement.

Ohio House minority leader Allison Russo, a democrat from suburban Columbus, told reporters after the race was called that the ballot language was “100 percent” why it failed.

“I think if voters had accurate information going into the ballot box, it would have passed overwhelmingly,” she said. “There’s no doubt in my mind that it fell simply because of the misleading ballot language and the abuse of power that happened from people like Frank LaRose.” 

LaRose, the republican Ohio secretary of state, chairs the Ohio Ballot Board, the GOP-controlled panel that wrote the Issue 1 ballot language.

When CNP issued a statement around midnight the night of the election, it argued voters against the amendment proposal thought they were voting to end gerrymandering.   

“Though we didn’t get the outcome we worked for, we have laid a powerful foundation,” former Ohio Supreme Court Justice Maureen O’Connor, who led the campaign, said in the statement. “We will continue to push for an Ohio where every vote truly counts and where transparency and fairness guide our electoral process. In analyzing the vote tonight, it is clear that the millions of Ohioans who voted yes want to end gerrymandering. And it is also clear that those who voted no thought that they were voting to end gerrymandering.”

The defeat of Issue 1 means that republicans will continue to control redistricting in Ohio. The development has potential national ramifications, since there only a few dozen congressional districts nationally competitive. The dynamic leads the parties to duke it out every two years over control of the U.S. House of Representatives, including this year, when national republicans have tried to retain their narrow control of the chamber.

The development means Ohio will keep redistricting amendments voters approved by overwhelming majorities in 2015 and 2018, with support from both parties. Those reforms were meant to prevent gerrymandering by imposing tougher rules for splitting counties and other communities and including language meant to encourage partisan fairness, although republicans, after winning key statewide elections in 2018, ultimately ended up arguing in court that those requirements were optional.  

The rules still did produce more competitive congressional elections in 2020 and 2022, although part of that is a reflection of the profound uncompetitiveness of the republican-drawn maps that the state used for the previous decade.

With Issue 1’s defeat, the Ohio Redistricting Commission, a panel of elected officials that republicans control thanks to their success in the 2018 elections, will remain in charge of redistricting. The panel will redraw Ohio’s congressional maps ahead of the 2026 election. Ohio’s state legislative maps would have been redrawn if Issue 1 passed, but instead they will remain in place through 2030.

Ohio Supreme Court rejected seven sets of maps under existing system

The 2015 and 2018 reforms failed the first time they were used ahead of the 2022 elections. The Ohio Supreme Court rejected seven sets of maps drawn by the GOP-controlled Ohio Redistricting Commission as illegally gerrymandered in favor of republicans. As the legal process dragged on, the state ended up having to delay its primary election in 2022 for state legislative races, leading to historically low voter turnout. As a result of the uncertainty and confusion, both parties failed to field candidates in a handful of races.

Ultimately, though, Republicans managed to push for the maps to be used in the 2022 election, thanks to a mix of legal victories and a willingness to ignore the Ohio Supreme Court’s orders. O’Connor, a republican chief justice who joined the court’s three democrats to reject the seven maps as unconstitutional, ended up joining the campaign to push for Issue 1 shortly after she was forced to retire at the end of 2022 due to judicial age limits.

O’Connor served as a key spokesperson for the Issue 1 campaign, which portrayed the amendment as nonpartisan even though its financial backing came from liberal groups, including a handful of well-known “dark money” groups that don’t disclose their donors. 

Republican worried new map making process could cost them seats

After republicans solidified their control of the Ohio Supreme Court in the November 2022 election, they ended up striking a deal with redistricting commission democrats on a new set of state legislative maps. Democrats described their vote as a compromise, arguing they would have gotten a potentially worse deal had they not agreed.

Republicans believed Issue 1 would cause them to lose seats in Congress and the state legislature. So they tried to defeat the measure by portraying it as a democratic power grab. They convinced former president Donald Trump to oppose it, which became a cornerstone of their campaign strategy. They also tried to argue the current redistricting system works – pointing to the bipartisan vote for the state legislative maps, although Gov. Mike DeWine’s backing of an Iowa-style redistricting plan muddles that idea.

Republicans also argued the citizens’ redistricting commission would be unaccountable to voters. Under a set of rules described as giving the citizens’ commission financial independence, Issue 1 guarantees the redistricting process $7 million of funding every 10 years and requires the legislature to pay any legal bills that accrue while defending commission maps against court challenges.

Issue 1 failed despite public polling in Ohio mostly showing the measure with a strong lead. However, a public poll released last week by Miami University specifically asked voters about the measure using parts of the republican-drawn ballot language. It showed it tied at 47 percent. This shows how important ballot language can be for issue campaigns, especially if it’s an issue that’s not top of mind for most voters.

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