Ohio Issue 1 anti-gerrymandering amendment appears heading for defeat

COLUMBUS – Ohioans on Tuesday appeared to reject an amendment that would have created a new citizen-led commission in charge of drawing legislative districts, opting instead to keep the old politics-dominated system.

With nearly 80% of the vote tallied, Issue 1 was trailing with 45.5% of the vote, unofficial tallies from the Ohio secretary of state showed. The issue was opposed by 54.5%.

The issue trailed by more than 400,000 votes.

Decision Desk, a race calling service used by media companies, called the issue as going down to defeat. The Associated Press, which cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer use, had not announced its call in the race as of 10:50 p.m.

Opponents of Issue 1 roared at an Ohio Works election gathering in Columbus as Ohio Republican Party Chair Alex Triantafilou declare the issue was going down to defeat.

Triantafilou led the crowd in an “O-H” “I-O” cheer as the crowd cheered.

Ohio Senate President Matt Hoffman, a contender for Ohio House speaker in the next General Assembly, praised Gov. Mike DeWine’s efforts for stopping the amendment. DeWine, in July, said the plan in Issue 1 was the wrong approach.

“We were dead in the water in July, and Gov. Mike DeWine turned this thing around,” Huffman said.

Issue 1’s backers had sought to strip politicians of power that Republicans wielded to draw themselves historic supermajorities in the state legislature and a two-to-one advantage in the state’s congressional delegation.

The independent commission made up equally of Democrats, Republicans and political independents would have drawn new maps next year for the 2026 elections, and then every decade.

But Republicans, who dominated the political map drawing process, opposed the issue. They argued it would set up a process that would empower a panel that voters could never hold accountable. That commission, they argued, would be unchecked on spending power.

And the amendment itself, with a goal of making maps with representation proportional to Ohio’s voting trends, they claimed, would require gerrymandering – the very problem that Issue 1 aimed to change.

Backers of the amendment were far better funded than its opponents, raising about $40 million at last count. But Republican opponents erected a major hurdle for the reform campaign in the language voters saw on their ballots.

Backers of the amendment had argued that Republicans stacked the deck against the amendment with ballot language, written by Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose’s office, that claimed the amendment would require gerrymandering, the very thing backers said they wanted to eliminate. The GOP-led Ohio Ballot Board approved the language, which Issue 1 proponents said was purposely meant to confuse voters.

But the Republican-led Ohio Supreme Court sided 4-3 with the Ballot Board, leaving intact most of a Republican-authored ballot summary that paints the proposal in an unfavorable light.

Among other things, the court’s Republican majority let stand wording stating that a proposed new redistricting commission is “not elected by or subject to removal by the voters of the state” and would be “required to gerrymander” congressional and legislative districts.

Issue 1 was backed by a bipartisan coalition led by former Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor, a Republican, and arose out of frustration that despite amendments approved overwhelmingly in 2015 and 2018 to stop excessive political gerrymandering, the practice continued. Support for each of those issues eclipsed 70%.

But when the new system set up by the amendments was put to the test, Republicans who dominated the redistricting ignored the rules in the constitution.

And when the Ohio Supreme Court served as a check on the commission, rejecting maps as unconstitutional, the GOP mapmakers used them anyway. The seven-member Ohio Redistricting commission includes five Republicans and two Democrats.

With Tuesday’s vote, that system for redistricting remains in place.