Site will let Ohioans draw voting districts

March 13, 2009 at 12:00a.m.

COLUMBUS (AP) — A new Web site will let Ohioans try their hand at redrawing the state’s congressional districts and then grade the results for fairness.

The League of Women Voters of Ohio, with the support of Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner and a few Democratic state lawmakers, wants to show that districts can be drawn more fairly using mathematical formulas.

The Web site hasn’t launched yet. When it does, members of the public will be able use data from the 2000 Census and election results to help them draw districts according to their own ideas. The formulas will then grade the districts based on how representative and competitive they are.

The controlling party of the legislature decides how congressional districts are drawn, which critics argue minimizes competition and results in ideologically polarized representatives.

“What we want to do is to demonstrate that there are ways that you can insert a formula into the process so that you can actually create some rules,” Brunner said.

If successful, the same formulas and ideas for drawing the congressional districts could be applied to state legislative districts, which are currently drawn by the state Apportionment Board. The board is made up of the state auditor, secretary of state, governor and one lawmaker from each party. The board’s composition hands the authority to draw districts to the dominant party in state government at the time.

Any change in the redistricting process would need legislative support, followed by support from voters on the ballot. Alternately, an outside group could attempt to place a redistricting proposal directly on the ballot.

The Apportionment Board is slated to redraw legislative districts after the 2010 Census.

Lawmakers and voters in recent years have chosen not to change the way districts are drawn.

For example, voters opposed a ballot issue in 2005 that would have taken the power to draw legislative districts away from the Apportionment Board and given it to a redistricting commission that would have used mathematical formulas to determine fairness.

In 2006 a Republican plan fell short in the House by just a few votes after all but one Democrat voted against it. That failed proposal mirrored one put forth by a Democratic-leaning coalition in 2005 that never got a committee hearing in the Republican-controlled House.

State Sen. Jon Husted, a Republican from Kettering, said he will introduce a redistricting proposal during the legislative session that mirrors one pushed by Republicans last year. He said he would work to try to mesh his ideas with others interested in changing the redistricting process, but that any plan needed to have a substantive change regarding who is drawing the districts and not just an inclusion of formulas to grade competitiveness.

“Now at least there’s a recognition in principle from a lot of people who have opposed these things in the past that there needs to be a change,” Husted said about the growing redistricting consensus.

Critics of redistricting by partisan advantage argue it creates a system in which general election outcomes are largely foregone conclusions. The eventual winner is therefore chosen by a primary process that selects the most ideologically rigid candidate.

“What we have ended up doing in Ohio is sending highly polarized legislators to the General Assembly and then expecting them to compromise and work together in a situation that more or less had the deck stacked against them,” said Linda Lalley, president of the League of Women Voters of Ohio.