|
Unconstitutional: And as may have seen in the news, last week the Ohio Supreme Court ruled that the new maps defining the boundaries for both Ohio's Congressional districts as well as the Ohio Legislature's Senate and House districts were unconstitutional.
This ruling has added an element of chaos to both the political and policy world in Columbus. And to the surprise of few, politics will many times trump policy. So until there is clarity about what are the district boundaries for the 2022 elections, it is not expected to that there will be much accomplished legislatively.
The Ohio primary election is on May 3, which means that candidates must file their petitions to run for office 90 days prior to that date, or by February 3. State legislators are required to live in the districts they represent. (Not a requirement for members of Congress.) And state legislators need to have petitions signed by registered voters of their district. So to be able to file petitions with sufficient signatures of voters from the district, the boundaries of the districts for state legislators must first be resolved.
Unless new law is passed, this process must be accomplished in the next 2 weeks.
The core issues involved have to do with proportionality of districts that reflect the general election voting patterns in recent elections, and at the same time, not splitting too many existing political boundaries, like counties, cities, etc. The Court ruled that the level of partisanship and amount of boundary splitting was excessive in the first set of maps. In the last election, the statewide vote in Ohio was approximately 54% for Republicans and 46% for Democrats. The Court is seeking a legislative map that approximates proportion in terms of majority voters in each district. The rejected plan had approximately 66% of districts favoring Republicans.
Time is short. So the Ohio Supreme Court set a deadline of this Saturday to produce new maps that meet Constitutional standards. Much more to come on all of this.
| 
