Gov. Kasich strikes blow for fairness in elections

His critics undoubtedly will argue that Ohio Gov. John R. Kasich was playing presidential politics when he publicly came out in support of changing the way this state and others create congressional districts.

But what difference does Kasich’s motivation make if the result is inclusion of fairness in the way members of the House of Representatives are elected?

We, along with numerous state and national grass-roots organizations led by the League of Women Voters, have long railed against the method used by Ohio to establish congressional district boundaries. It is so political that what we have today in the state is a delegation in the U.S. House of 12 Republicans and four Democrats – even though Ohio’s voting patterns show a fairly even political divide. It is the ultimate swing state, and yet the congressional delegation is overwhelmingly Republican.

How did that happen? In 2012, with the Ohio General Assembly and the governor’s office in GOP hands, the desire by party leaders to stack the deck became the guiding principle. A close look at the boundaries and population distribution make clear that Republican candidates in most of the districts have a distinct advantage.

Republican architects of the congressional map deny that the process was unfair to Democrats and has undermined fair elections.

But listen to what Kasich, a candidate for the Republican nomination for president, had to say recently in a year-end speech in Columbus:

“I support redistricting reform dramatically. This will be something I’m going to do, whether I’m elected president or whether I’m here. … I think we need to eliminate gerrymandering. We’ve got to figure out a way to do it. We’ve got to be aggressive on it. We’ve got to have more competitive districts. That to me is what’s good for the state of Ohio and what’s good for the country.”

That’s what we’ve been saying for the past three years. We now have a reason to be cautiously optimistic that change may in the offing. We are hedging because the GOP leadership in the General Assembly has been less than enthusiastic about taking on this important issue.

Indeed, last month, after the voters of Ohio supported a constitutional amendment that changes the way Ohio House and Senate district lines are drawn, there was a lot of hemming and hawing when the GOP leadership was asked if the congressional districts were next.

But Republicans can’t ignore the fact that more than 71 percent of Ohioans who voted in November said it was time to change the map-drawing process for Ohio Senate and House districts.

Fairness and transparency were the selling points put forth by proponents of change – Democrats and Republicans – and that is what Gov. Kasich has in mind as he leads the charge for change on the congressional level.

MAKE DISTRICTS COMPETITIVE

There have been a variety of proposals on redrawing boundaries, but the key to any redistricting is competitiveness.

A toss-up state like Ohio should have a congressional delegation that reflects the political reality.

In 2012, the [Cleveland] Plain Dealer analyzed what the GOP had created with this cogent paragraph:

“Even though most Ohio voters backed Democrats in this year’s presidential and U.S. Senate elections, new congressional maps designed to protect GOP incumbents kept three quarters of the state’s U.S. House of Representatives seats in Republican hands.”

Here are some statistics that support the premise of the analysis:

Between 1982 and 1990, the vote in Ohio was 51 percent Democratic and 49 percent Republican. In that period, Democrats controlled 51 percent of Ohio’s seats in the U.S. House and Republicans had 49 percent.

Between 2002 and 2010, the Democratic-Republican vote was 49 percent to 51 percent. However, the number of seats in the House was 38 percent Democratic and 62 percent Republican.

In 2012, the vote breakdown was 49 percent Democratic to 51 percent Republican. But, the number of seats remained unchanged: 38 percent Democratic to 62 percent Republican.

It does not take a rocket scientist to see what the Republican majority in the Ohio Legislature has done: created congressional districts that guarantee overwhelming Republican control of the delegation.

We applaud Gov. Kasich for recognizing that a democracy flourishes when there is political balance and urge him to make redistricting reform a top priority in the three years left in his final term as governor.