Fair Districts Ohio

(bright upbeat music) - Hello and welcome to "The Journal.

I'm Steve Kendall.

2021 is the year Ohio redraws its congressional districts based on data from the 2020 census.

The process is always controversial, usually political in nature.

Joining us to talk about this and an initiative called Fair Districts Ohio is Joan Callecod and Catherine Turcer.

Welcome both of you to "Journal".

Joan, could you kind of lay out just the basics of the redistricting process as it stands right now in Ohio, and then we'll talk about the Fair Districts Initiative.

- Okay.

Thank you for having us on, Steve.

We appreciate it.

The US constitution requires that they know that population shifts that every 10 years based on the census that congressional districts are redrawn to reflect those changes in population.

So it has been controversial since almost the beginning gerrymandering started in the 18th century, actually.

So, and that's what most people are familiar with rather than redistricting and call it gerrymandering.

They're not the same thing because redistricting is a straightforward drawing of the maps, then gerrymandering is drawing the maps to favor one political party or the other.

And whichever is in the majority is generally the one that is controlling it.

And in 2015 and 2018, in an attempt to reduce the really heavy gerrymandering that was done based on the 2010 census, while statewide 50% or 49 to 51% is a split between the Democrats and Republicans in Ohio's statewide election.

However, the state houses and the US Congress ended up 75, 25.

So, recognize that that is not a reflection of the citizens of Ohio.

So those amendments in 2015 and 2018, try to set up a system that would be more partisan or nonpartisan, I should say, and open to the public.

And those are two very important features of those two amendments both of which passed by well over 70% of the Ohio voters statewide and by a majority in each of the 88 counties.

So the message was there.

We do not want gerrymandering and there are special challenges with the current redistricting.

One of it, this is the first time those amendments are being applied.

So it's a learning process.

Secondly, as everyone knows, the census was delayed instead of getting the census data early January, we're not gonna get it till mid August.

And there are deadlines in those constitutional amendments that are a challenge.

While the deadlines are there and we wanna be the spirit of the amendments, even if maybe the technical points are exactly there.

We want that non-partisanship.

Public needs to have meetings on the proposed map before they're adopted, which is very important.

And right now the focus of their districts coalition is to get information to the commission members.

I'm sure Catherine will you who those are about.

Let's convene this commission now so they are organized by the time they do get the data and can get right to work in redrawing those maps.

- Okay.

Now, Catherine, the commission that's going to do this, where does that stand right now?

Because I believe is the governor appoint the members of that commission.

Is that a part of these amendments that they sort of, efforts to non politicize this, I guess the way to look...

So, talk a little about that commission and how they go about their business.

- Okay.

So I think we need to step back just a little bit, which has to do with like, you know, the manipulation of those district lines, is the manipulation of elections.

And so, you know, we're caring about all of these things that are like these details and these things that happen every 10 years and involved map-making because we want everyone to participate in meaningful elections.

I think it's really important for us to think about, you know, yes, if you think about the fifth congressional district, it's fairly compact, but it's surrounded by that Jim Jordan Duck District, you know, where you have, you know, the bill that's up in Lorain County and the tail others in Mercer County.

And when you think about what they call the Snake on the Lake which goes from Toledo to Cleveland, we start to think about kind of the manipulation that has gone on this time, what we're really thinking about and needing and expect because voters approved it, is a really, truly transparent process.

And so what John was getting at is, okay, what are the next steps?

Well, we know that in a normal year, what would happen is the legislature would already be doing public hearings.

In a normal year the Ohio Redistricting Commission would have been convened because we would have gotten that data in April.

What is unfortunate is, not that they're not doing work, they're just not doing work in the public eye.

And so what does need to happen, is the governor needs to convene the Ohio District Commission which is tasked with drawing those state legislative maps, so it's the Ohio House and the Ohio Senate and we also need to have the state legislature begin to convene some public hearings so that there can be public participation.

You know, when we think about kind of crowdsourcing these maps so that they are reflective of the voters and not the will of folks who wanna manipulate them for partisan advantage.

- Yeah.

Now and obviously the concern is that even with these amendments in 15 and 18 and this process in place, that we won't get that transparency, that it will be sort of old school redistricting or line drawing again versus what these two laws were supposed to prevent actually.

- So I know for myself, that's what I worry a lot about is that voters took a step.

They approved this, the state legislature came together to come up with this great compromise and to come up with, you know, transparency and compactness and rules that keep our communities together so that we don't have these manipulations and they have not convened the Ohio Redistricting Commission.

It is the governor who's responsible for that.

The legislature has not had any public hearings and what we do know is that in the Ohio budget, there was an amendment that was taken out as a veto by the governor, which said that the leaders of both chamber, both Republicans, would be able to engage in a redistricting lawsuit.

So we know that behind the scenes, they're thinking about this.

They're just not doing the things that they should be doing in public.

- Ah Okay.

Well, when we come back, let's talk a little bit more about that and then also talk again maybe a little bit too about not only are we redrawing and there are multiple processes, but we're redrawing congressional districts, but also the state districts get redrawn, but that's sort of a separate process or feels like a separate process anyway.

So when we come back we'll dig a little deeper into the weeds on redistricting or line drawing.

Back in just a moment, here on "The Journal" on WBGU-PBS.

Thanks for staying with us on "The Journal".

Our guests are Joan Callecod and Catherine Turcer and we're gonna get to the initiative, Fair District Ohio in just a moment but a little bit more about the process and the way it's supposed to work with these amendments that were done in 15 and 18.

And Catherine, there's a distinction between a bipartisan redrawing of these congressional districts and partisan redrawing.

So talk a little about what happens if one party does this versus both parties being involved in a bipartisan way to draw these 'cause the law makes a distinction for that as well.

- So I think it's really important to realize that the rules for the map-making focused on creating bipartisan map-making, meaning Democrats and Republicans working together on map-making.

And this means keeping elected officials in the, you know, in the seat when it comes to drawing the maps.

And you can imagine that there'll be some challenges with some of that kind of arm wrestling, you know, Democrats and Republicans.

It will be a challenge to come up with maps.

They have a set of rules that focus on keeping communities together and the way that they, you know, the way that it's in the Ohio constitution focuses on keeping political subdivisions together, and then try to make sure that we make the process as open as possible because, let's face it, you know, if we have other eyes on it and people are paying attention, then these district lines will be drawn, you know, to focus on keeping our communities together and in ways that are much more reasonable than they are right now.

Now, because it's not exactly easy to get to bipartisan maps, there is a process and I'm gonna go kind of, go for congressional.

So for the congressional folks, the map making is given to the state legislature and we all know the state legislature is at the moment dominated by the GOP.

And that means that what they'll need to do, is it's a super majority that will pass the congressional maps.

But, you know, to get a tenure map was was 60% so a super majority, and then 50% of the Democrats and 50% of the Republicans.

And that's how they manage.

Whether, you know, whoever's in charge, you know, sometimes you need to make sure you just say, all right, 50, 50.

So they're given an opportunity to draw these congressional district lines with the new rules, but sometimes it won't work.

And then it will go over to the Ohio Redistricting Commission.

The Ohio Redistricting Commission has seven different members and these members will primarily be also Republicans.

So there's governor, auditor, secretary of state, two members of both chambers, Democrat, Republican, both chambers.

And the way to look at this is the Democrats have a Veto because you need a majority to pass the map, but you always have to have two of the major parties.

So two Democrats, two Republicans.

So that's how you can also get a 10 year map.

And then what happens if that doesn't work?

And, you know, one of the things that I think of this is it's like this redistricting gauntlet.

If that doesn't work, it goes back to the legislature and they'll have lower kinds of rules for this kind of bipartisan map-making, but they will still need to have for a 10 year map, bipartisan buy-in, you know, 30% Democrats, 30% Republicans, and then, you know, if that finally doesn't work, they strengthen the rules so that you know, basically it makes it very hard.

They say, you have to keep counties holes, city holes, townships holes, and then you have to explain every single decision that you've made.

That's a short term map four years, it can be by one political party, but because of the rules are so tight, it is the kind of thing where sometimes people are like, oh no, not a four year map.

Well, obviously there are problems with a four year map.

But the four year map has really good rules, so that we never actually wanna get to that four year map, but if it does happen, voters shouldn't be concerned or as concerned as, you know, you might be because of the good rules.

- Hmm.

Okay.

So it's interesting though.

So the four year map, although it's not the outcome you would really wanna have happen is more tightly defined than the 10 year maps would be.

So it's interesting that yeah, the effort, obviously being to not end up to having to do a four year map, I guess, was their ultimate goal.

- Was to discourage the party in power from playing around.

- Right.

Right.

So when you look at the makeup of this commission and either one of you can weigh in, the governor appoints these folks, and as you said, it's made up of some of the folks who are already in elected office.

That's always been the case.

It's always been a mixture of people in there like that.

Is there hope that this commission will be different than other commissions?

That's the goal because as you said, Catherine, I know Joan, you were talking about this as well, that the idea is to end up with more compact districts that don't divide jurisdictions, sort of randomly among to make something look a certain way or to make it the outcome be predetermined.

And that's why we've got districts that we have right now that stretch along the lake, a string over there that runs from Toledo to Lorraine and then you've got in the case of one of our, the people in our viewing area, one of the congressmen, a district runs north and south the same kind of way and winds it way eventually up to Lorraine because you said it goes all the way down to Mercer County which is a pretty good stretch.

So that's what the goal is here, is to make these districts more representative of areas and not break up jurisdictions, correct?

- Right.

Yeah, the ultimate goal is to be sure that voters choose their legislators and the legislators don't choose their voters.

And that's what happens when you have this really strong gerrymandering.

So that is the ultimate goal.

And what we're interested in with their districts is to have the citizens contact both the governor and the members of the commission and say, convene this commission now so it's organized and ready to go when you do get the data.

Because it is a challenge, you know, to conform to the requirements of the amendments.

And again, the timelines are there within the amendments, but hopefully there'll be some wiggle room with that as we go on.

Catherine, what do you think?

- Yeah.

And I also think there are all of these little details about map-making and what we should all walk away with, is this process, which is a little bit complicated, is incredibly important because these last for 10 years, and these are your important voting maps and the manipulation of those lines really splits our communities so that in fact, we're not getting the kind of representation that we deserve when, you know, we send folks to Washington, we're not getting the kind of representation and accountability that we deserve when we send people to the Ohio State House.

And so I think it's important to focus on the rules which focus on keeping communities whole.

And, you know, it's a little bit challenging, too many details, but really focusing on the notion of we deserve accountability, we deserve transparency and that it's really important because we all wanna participate in meaningful elections.

- Yeah.

And I guess if you, and of course this is going on, not just in Ohio this year, going on in states, well, all the states across the country usually have a process for this.

Each of them do it differently.

So Ohio's is unique to Ohio for the most part, that sort of thing.

When we come back, let's talk a little more about Fair Districts Ohio and the goals and the processes there and the initiatives.

And I think one of you mentioned that, you know, there was concern that someone had added something to the state budget which eventually was taken back out.

That was an effort to, sort of in a way, feel like it was gonna circumvent some of the things, the 15 and 18 amendment.

So, when we come back, let's talk about Fair Districts Ohio and what the initiatives are there and how people can get involved and how people can become involved just in the redistricting process in general as well.

So, back in just a moment here on "The Journal".

Thanks for staying with us on "The Journal", our guests are Joan Callecod and Catherine Turcer.

And we've talked a lot about the process, but one of the groups, a coalition of groups is Fair Districts Ohio and Joan, you wanna talk about that group and what the goals are there as part of this redistricting process?

- Thank you.

I'd love to.

The Fair Districts Ohio has been an operation for a long time and it is a coalition of several groups that work on democracy issues.

Includes the Legal Women Voters of Ohio, A Common Cause, the ACLU and the Ohio Council of Churches, and several other organizations that are non-partisan.

And its purpose is to educate the voters about the issues that are facing them in elections and how the legislative redistricting process works.

They worked together very closely in both 2015 when the amendment that we did, how the state houses and Senate are drawn.

And then again, in 2018 how the congressional districts was drawn.

It was a very close cooperation between them.

They provide literature and yard signs.

Maybe many of you have seen the yard signs in Legal Women Voters of Bowling Green.

There's been a real demand with those signs out.

So we know the public is getting more and more aware of it which we're very appreciative of.

It also has training sessions where you could view if someone wants to have a presentation on redistricting, go to fairdistrictsohio.org and you'll be able to find a link just to get a speaker going.

Also, they have a program available to actually do the map drawing.

And there are classes teaching citizens how to do that.

So they see what the complexity really is.

And that citizen input is just really, really important.

Unfortunately, the only source of revenue for Fair Districts Ohio is donations and a few grants.

And in Bowling Green last Friday night, we had a fundraiser for them.

And we had a very good reception by the people.

It was actually at Arlyn's Good Beer and people, I don't know if the beer loosen them up or what, but they were very generous in supporting their districts.

And we were just very eager to get the information out so the citizens are involved in watching the process and making sure that it's being done according to what they want to have done.

- Now, Catherine, we talked a little bit about the process, but when we look at these districts, whether they're state districts or they're the US congressional districts, one of the pieces I believe and correct me if I'm wrong, is that there's an effort to provide balanced representation in terms of the number of people in each district.

Is that the case or am I wrong about that?

Isn't that one of the basic tenants of this?

- So, this is absolutely right.

Some people here they're like one person one vote is the best way to think about this.

So the reason that we do this every 10 years is the people move, the population shifts, there are all sorts of different changes and so one of the things that they do is they say, okay, we have 435 members of Congress.

We now know that we will have 15 districts rather than 16.

These districts will need to be about equal in population.

So they don't have to absolutely but they need to be about equal in population because you wanna be sure that it's fair for all voters across both state of Ohio and across the country.

And so yes, you're absolutely right.

The reason we do all this is to make sure that these districts have about equal population.

So we all have good representation.

It's so worrisome that in fact, that, you know, we haven't yet received the census data.

So we have been waiting on the decennial census and we haven't received it yet and the map-making starts in the fall.

- Yeah.

And one of the things that's interesting about that too, is when you look at drawing those districts and you mentioned it just now, Ohio will lose a congressional seat, which means the process now has another layer of complexity, which means instead of drawing 16 districts, you have to draw 15.

So in one way, I guess that makes it more complicated.

but the same time, you have to start with a fresh page, I guess, at that point or clean sheet to try and figure out a way to eliminate a congressional district and yet provide that balance of representation that we've been talking about.

- And we do know going into this, that it won't be like last time.

Marcy Kaptur up in Toledo, that they created a district, that went from Marcy Kaptur's home to Dennis Kucinich's home who was a Congressman at the time.

And it was a way to eliminate one of the members of Congress because we had a fewer districts.

And so, you know, one of the things that we know this time, they're not gonna be able to do those kinds of manipulations because of the rules that we keep communities whole, and that will make this process simply better for voters.

- Yeah, and let's talk -- - I know.

- Sorry, go ahead, Joan, sorry.

- I know redistrict maps that and have other complications because of having to maintain to political division based on the prior election but recently I saw a map of ODOT districts in Ohio and it would strictly by county, you know, and it looks so nice and clean and I thought, well, maybe we'll get close to that.

I know it can't do that exactly just because of all the other parameters of drawing the maps but it was so refreshing to see something like that, you know?

But it's a process that I really again, want the citizens to stay on top of.

- Right.

Now, deadline wise.

and we've talked about the fact that census is delayed and that tends to start to push everything back, what are some of the harder deadlines that are supposed to be met when it comes to this, Catherine?

- So one of the first deadlines is that on August 16th, the state of Ohio will get the census data.

On September 1st, they're supposed to create the state legislative maps.

So, this is the Ohio House and Ohio Senate.

Okay, there's not enough time, right?

But just there isn't enough time.

So we know that we're gonna need to adjust the deadlines for these Ohio House and the Ohio Senate districts.

The last deadline for Congress is November 30th, which is still not a lot of time to work through and look at all the different ways that you could do maps and do public hearings and all of those kinds of things.

Now, the reason we have these deadlines specifically in the constitution, had to do with, if you don't have a deadline, it's very hard to actually get the work done.

So, you know, what do you need, you need a deadline so you can get things done.

What we should be focusing on is making sure that these districts are ready for the primary, the 2022 primary.

And that's the reason why there's a real focus on deadlines.

Folks shouldn't worry too much about those initial deadlines.

They just have to be adjusted, one may turn up what are you gonna do?

But as we're going through this process, there's just not as much time as there was in 2011 or 2001, which was the first time that I was involved in the map-making.

And so we will all need to be paying closer attention for a shorter period of time.

- Yeah.

And it does, of course you said, compresses the timeline.

I know we've talked about, it's a ten-year map.

You sort of, you would like to get it as close to right as you can because theoretically we're gonna live with this for 10 years.

If it gets to the ten-year map versus the four.

But yeah those deadlines are very tight and under normal circumstances yeah we would have had the spring, the summer into the end of this August and September deadline but that's not the case.

And at the same time you don't wanna rush this either because that, you know, you don't wanna make the deadlines become the driving force and that drives the content versus the other way around.

So, and this, Joan from your perspective is there, we've got just a moment or two here, is there something you wanna make sure that people are clear on that they should know, the one thing they should take away from what's going on with redistricting and Fair Districts Ohio?

- Well, I think the important thing is to keep informed and know what's happening and if there's an opportunity for a public meeting, attended it so that you can see what's going on and you can make the individuals who are presenting that meeting know how you feel about what they're doing.

If they're doing the job that we directed them to do in these amendments, or if they're going back to the old school way of doing it.

But I think one of the most important issues or parts of these amendments is also the public being involved in it.

- Yeah.

And Catherine real quickly, because part of these amendments were to basically bring this process out into the open, correct?

- So, yeah.

So in 2011, the maps were created in what they called the bunker.

And we know this 'cause of the emails between the mapmakers that it was called the bunker and it was a hotel room that was, you know, 500 feet from the State House.

And so this time we really want a truly transparent process.

I firmly believe we can get greater accountability and we get greater input and we can definitely help kind of crowdsource and do public testimony if we can move this into the sunlight.

And I think the challenge is that the Ohio Rediststricting Commission is not yet been convened for some of the preparatory stages and we're very close to the map making.

So I'm very hopeful that the Governor DeWine will convene the Redistricting Commission as soon as possible and the state legislature will begin their hearings by the beginning of next month just so that we have a process in place that is truly pro public and truly transparent.

- Okay, great.

- I encourage the people who to keep up with it to look at the fairdistrictsohio.org website, because they have a lot of information on there and I'm sure they will be updating it as we move forward in this process.

- Okay, good.

Joan Callecod and Catherine Turcer, thank you so much for being here today.

And as this process goes on, we may call on you again to kind of give us an update on how things are progressing or not progressing as this redistricting process moves through in the next few months and into the next year.

So, thank you so much for being here.

You can check us out at WBGU.org and of course, you can watch "The Journal" every Thursday night at 8:00 p.m here on WBGU- PBS.

We'll see you again next time on "The Journal".

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