Ohio Reapportionment Reform Proposal

[muon2]

I find most strange the idea that the commission can be isolated from partisan influence. People talk to other people, and the idea thta judges don't talk to elected officials seems strange. It might be better to allow communication (which will probably happen anyway), and make it clear to the public what the partisan leanings of the commissioners might be.

[muon2]

I find most strange the idea that the commission can be isolated from partisan influence. People talk to other people, and the idea thta judges don't talk to elected officials seems strange. It might be better to allow communication (which will probably happen anyway), and make it clear to the public what the partisan leanings of the commissioners might be.

I don't think the intent is to isolate it from partisan influence, as much as attempting to keep it out of the hands of one party or another, and also to remove it from the control of the general assembly.  This is especially the case for districting of the general assembly where each member has their own interest to look after.

The 2 longest serving justices of the district courts of appeals of opposite parties would appoint the first two members of the redistricting commission from their own party.  These two appointees would together then choose the other three members, including one from each party and one non-affiliated person.  There are a lot of restrictions on who can be members of the commission, so I'd be concerned that you could get an unbalanced commission with some highly partisan members and some more technically oriented who happen to have a party affiliation.

The scheme is presented as primarily a matter of the commission determining which independently submitted plan is the most competitive.  I think that the competitive index can be gamed, and it may actually encourage splitting of counties and townships.   It is not clear whether the intent is for the commission to create their own plan or not (they are permitted to do so, but only required to do so if their are no independent submissions).

I agree that this looks like it can be gamed. The index is given precedence over any geographical factors like county and township integrity. If thta's the case, one will get bizarre gerrymandered districts created in the name of competitiveness.

[muon2]

It seemed like a useful exercise to apply the proposed competitiveness index to the map I created with purerly geographic rules.

Note that my rules permit counties to be split more than two ways in order to minimize counties that are split, and minimize the total number of fractional counties. This is not permitted under Ohio law and happens once in Stark county. This would be easy to fix, and would have no substantial change on the results.

I've completed Ohio using the usual rules.



Only one city, Columbus, is larger than the population of a district. Columbus also has a number of unincorporated pockets inside, and I'm only guessing that I can make a district entirely within the City limits, and provide the necessary links between the pockets and the adjacent districts. With that assumption, rules P-1,2,3 are all zero.

OH has a number of counties with large urban centers, and that forces some county splits.  I split  Montgomery and Stark that were less than one district size, and split  Stark into three pieces to avoid
splitting a third small county.  Rule P-4 is two.

All three large counties had a district wholly within them, and Cuyahoga has two wholly within. Rule P-5 is zero. All three also only have two partial districts. Rule P-6  is 11 partial districts, and rule P-7 is three maximum in any county.

I only used data from the 2004 Persidential election, rather than the six individual races called for by the proposal. Nonetheless it gives some idea. I've also tries to number my districts in a similar fashion to the current CDs.

CD 1 (Cincinnati) Dem + 6.3%
CD 2 (Cinci East) Rep + 38.3% Uncompetive
CD 3 (Middletown) Rep +30.2% Uncompetitive
CD 4 (Mansfield) Rep +23.9% Uncompetitive
CD 5 (Bowling Green) Rep +32.2% Uncompetitive
CD 6 (Canton) Dem +1.7% COMPETITIVE
CD 7 (Springfield) Rep +18.4% Uncompetitive
CD 8 (Dayton) Rep +5.2%
CD 9 (Toledo) Dem +10.0%
CD 10 (Parma) Dem +16.5% Uncompetitive
CD 11 (Cleveland) Dem +62.7% Uncompetitive
CD 12 (Newark) Rep +14.7%
CD 13 (Sandusky) Rep +0.1% COMPETITIVE
CD 14 (Euclid - Warren) Dem +11.9%
CD 15 (Columbus) Dem +25.3% Uncompetitive
CD 16 (Akron) Dem +13.2%
CD 17 (Youngstown) Dem +8.2%
CD 18 (Portsmouth) Rep +9.2%

There are two balanced competitive districts: 6 and 13. They add 4 points. There are two uncompetitive Dem districts that can be balanced against uncompetitive Rep districts so that they neither add nor subtract. That leaves four uncompetitive districts: 2, 3, 5 and 11 that add -8 points. The total measure of competitiveness is -4 points.

Some observations. It would take extreme measures to ever pair the Cleveland district with anything. There are too many Dems in a small area. It's also hard to do much about some of the solid Rep districts. On the other hand the proposal would favor carving up Cincinnati and Columbus to reduce the Rep strength surrounding them, this coming at the expense of intact municipalities as is currently favored.

Most notable and of concern is that there would be a strong inclination to make some Dem districts intentionally uncompetitive. For instance taking districts 14 and 16 and adding Dems to make them over 15% allows them to be used to cancel some uncompetitive Rep districts. This seems to run contrary to the purpose of competitive ness. To make sense an unbalanced district should be balanced by any district within 5%, even if that district is not uncompetitive.