All the political wrangling over a statewide redistricting issue in Ohio has landed voters in a fix. They are hearing from the campaign behind Issue 1 that it would prevent gerrymandering. But the language they’ll see on ballots says gerrymandering would be required. It’s a war over the word “gerrymander.
, a statewide ballot issue aimed at changing the way the state draws its political maps, has landed voters in a fix. While they are hearing from the campaign behindIt’s a war over one word — “gerrymander” — and rarely have so many dictionaries been called into action during an Ohio ballot campaign.
Ohioans voted overwhelmingly in 2015 to create the commission and have it draw Statehouse districts. During that bipartisan campaign, called Fair Districts for Ohio, they were promised the new system would “protect against gerrymandering.” In 2018, voters gave the commission an additional role in a new system set up to draw congressional districts.
Here, the definition of “gerrymander” from Webster’s Third New International Dictionary would be operative: “to divide into political units in an unnatural and unfair way with the purpose of giving special advantages to one group.”With litigation over maps tied to the 2020 Census unresolved, 2022 elections went forward under the unconstitutional maps.
Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose, who chairs the board, presented a three-page, single-spaced summary of his own. It said Issue 1 would “repeal constitutional protections against gerrymandering” approved by large margins in 2015 and 2018, and “eliminate the longstanding ability of citizens to hold their representatives accountable” for establishing fair districts.
LaRose read the Compact Oxford English Dictionary definition of “gerrymander” that he said inspired his office’s original phrasing — “to manipulate the boundaries of so as to favour one party or class.” He notedwith Massachusetts Gov. Eldridge Gerry — pronounced with a hard “g” — in 1812, in reaction to the redrawing of the state’s Senate districts.
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