How Issue 1 would impact voters
UC expert explains redistricting ballot question
WCPO turned to a University of Cincinnati professor to explain the implications of a ballot question that Ohio voters will decide in November.
Issue 1 would change the way Ohio draws state election maps to discourage gerrymandering or manipulating maps to favor one party.
Under Issue 1, maps would be drawn by a bipartisan commission instead of politicians. The commission would be appointed by a panel of retired judges.
“We have some of the most biased maps in the country, not just at the congressional level but the State House and the State Senate,” UC College of Arts and Sciences Professor David Niven told WCPO. He is a professor of political science in UC's School of Public and International Affairs.
The League of Women Voters called on Niven to review the state's latest redistricting maps to see if gerrymandering was still present after Ohio's last effort at reform. The Ohio Supreme Court ruled the legislative maps drawn by politicians were unconstitutional, but a federal court ordered the maps to be used in the 2022 election. The state Legislature eventually approved the redrawn districts.
“My answer from my review of the districts is decidedly no, we didn’t fix the problem,” Niven said. “We changed some of the problems but the fundamentals are still the same.”
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