Ohio is nearly halfway to the next constitutional deadline for congressional redistricting, and so far no public movement to reconvene the Ohio Redistricting Commission has been made.
Ohio House and Ohio Senate majority leadership say they’re awaiting the governor’s word that the commission will be meeting, and Democrats say they aren’t aware of any updates.
At a press conference last week announcing an executive order on intoxicating hemp, Gov. Mike DeWine was asked when the redistricting commission would meet and simply said, “Soon.”
“Well, we know what the law is; it’s going to have to occur this month,” DeWine said. “We know that it will occur.”
Because the General Assembly didn’t adopt a congressional district map before the end of September, the state constitution dictates the next deadline is Oct. 31. That deadline lies with the ORC, who have until then to hold public meetings and come up with a map that has bipartisan support.
The legislature is required to redraw the congressional map, which establishes the boundaries of Ohio’s U.S. House and Senate districts, to be used in the next election and beyond. The redraw is constitutionally required because lawmakers weren’t able to garner bipartisan support for the last set of maps, adopted by Republicans on the redistricting commission in March 2022.
The Ohio Supreme Court deemed the current map unconstitutional, but a federal court didn’t intervene in the congressional map challenges. A separate court challenge to the map was dropped by anti-gerrymandering advocates as a ballot initiative to reform redistricting and the next round of map-drawing seemed set to happen before the case could be resolved.
Legislators who led a joint committee on congressional redistricting last month fought back against calls that a map proposal was required before the constitutional deadline in September.
State Rep. Adam Bird, R-New Richmond, insisted the September deadline was one of many in the constitution, therefore did not legally bind the legislature to a certain date.
“Sept. 30th is in there, and yet, the constitution provides for a process if we don’t meet that,” Bird said at the first meeting of the joint committee on Sept. 22.
At the second and final meeting of the committee before the first deadline passed, Bird maintained the message that “we’ve still got a couple of months and we’ve still got time to keep talking.”
Legislative Democrats proposed a map in September, with eight Republican-leaning districts and seven Democratic-leaning districts. Minority party leaders said the proposal was meant as a jumping-off point for discussions about redistricting, in hopes it would spur more urgency in the process. The current map is made up of 10 Republican districts and three Democratic districts.
While the joint committee heard hours of support for the Democratic proposal, with only one person speaking out against it in the public hearings, no vote was held on the Democratic map. When asked about the progress on a Republican proposal, Bird said he didn’t know of a map as of Sept. 30.
Staff for the Ohio House GOP and the Ohio Senate GOP both said they didn’t have updates on the redistricting process as yet, nor did House and Senate minority staff members.
House Minority Communications Director David Meyers said “nothing firm” had been communicated when it came to a date for the commission to begin, and Casey Rife, communications director for Senate Democrats, said the caucus was “hoping to get to work as soon as possible.”
If the Ohio Redistricting Commission can’t come to an agreement on a map, the process moves back to the legislature with a Nov. 30 deadline. Different rules apply if the process returns to the General Assembly, and a map would only need a simple majority for passage.
This story was originally published by the Ohio Capital Journal and republished here with permission.