Columbus, Ohio — A proposal to change Ohio’s troubled political mapping system has been approved for the statewide ballot in November, the state’s elections director announced Tuesday.
Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose said the bipartisan Citizens Not Politicians had submitted 535,005 valid signatures in 58 counties, well above the roughly 414,000 needed to appear on ballots this fall. The campaign more than 700,000 petition signatures submitted on July 1st.
The next stop for the constitutional amendment is the Ohio Ballot Board, which must approve the text and title on the ballot.
The amendment is intended to replace the current Ohio Redistricting Commission, consisting of three statewide officials and four state legislators, with an independent body directly selected by citizens. The members of the new panel would be diversified based on party affiliation and geography.
The effort follows the repeated failure of the existing structure to produce constitutional maps. During the lengthy process of redrawing district boundaries to account for the results of the 2020 census, challenges filed in court resulted in two congressional maps and five sets of statehouse maps being rejected as unconstitutionally gerrymandered.
Retired Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor, who presided over the high court during the legal battle, called the certification “a historic step toward restoring fairness to Ohio’s election process.”
“With this amendment on the ballot, Ohioans have the opportunity to take back their power from self-interested politicians who want to stay in power long after their term is up while ignoring the needs of voters,” the Republican said in a statement.
A month after the ballot campaign was announced, the bipartisan Ohio Redistricting Commission voted unanimously to approve new Statehouse maps, with minority Democrats conceding to “better, fairer” maps that nevertheless continued to give the state’s governing Republicans a robust political advantage.
That same September, congressional district maps favoring Republicans were also introduced after the Ohio Supreme Court dismissed a group of legal challenges filed at the request of the voting rights groups that had brought them. The groups told the court that continuing to challenge the GOP-drawn maps created unrest that was not in the best interests of Ohio voters.