In November, Ohio residents will have an opportunity to vote on Issue 1, a constitutional amendment that would finally abolish the state’s extreme partisan gerrymandering. Voters will not, however, be informed of this fact on the ballot. Instead, the Ohio Supreme Court’s Republican majority ruled Monday that the amendment will be described in egregiously misleading terms on the ballot itself, with ultra-biased language designed to turn citizens against it. Incredibly, a proposal that would end gerrymandering will be framed as a proposal to require gerrymandering, a patently false representation of its intent and effect. The court’s 4–3 decision marks yet another effort to subvert democracy in Ohio by Republicans who fear that the citizenry—when given a voice on the matter—might dare to loosen their stranglehold on power.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/09/ohio-supreme-court-voter-fraud-gop.html
As an ohioian, the current system isn’t enabling some nobel pursuit of holding people accountable. It’s blatantly “our team draws the lines, in a way that benefits our team, who can draw the lines next time, benefitting our team again”
And even after the R weighted supreme court rules “the lines are biased - throw out the map”, they still find a way to use the map anyway. Yeah. Calling it a “repeal of gerrymander protection” is a joke and a half.
Yeah they’re completely unaccountable
The current maps are ‘illegal’. If you remember they were ordered to redraw the districts but have been using the maps from 10 or 12 years ago. There was no agreement on new ones and were ordered to keep redrawing but there was no teeth behind the order. There was a good NPR story on it last year.
They’ve updated the maps, my personal district changed the last couple years. But the maps they are using are still the ones the court explicitly ruled unconstitutional, I think from 2022. Brennan center has a nice timeline.
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/timeline-ohios-gerrymandered-maps-how-ohio-politicians-defied-court
That timeline is just insane to me. They don’t apply honest maps and we still have to vote.