Snakes, Ducks and Toilet Bowls: How Does Ohio Shape Its Congressional Districts?

Ideastream Public Media | By Kabir Bhatia

Published December 19, 2017 at 5:15 AM EST

The League of Women Voters and other citizen's groups are half way to the more than 300,000 signatures they need to get the redistricting issue on the November ballot. But state lawmakers may beat them to it by getting an issue on the February ballot.

Over the past five decades, Ohio’s Congressional districts have become increasingly “safe” for incumbents. And a big reason for that is the way the districts are strategically drawn for maximum political gain. In the second part of our series, “Gerrymandering: Shading the Lines,” WKSU’s Kabir Bhatia looks at how Ohio got to be this way.

Ian Yarber is a former Oberlin school board member. He considers himself a knowledgeable voter. He lives at the northeast end of the 4th Congressional District -- which stretches south and west nearly to the Indiana border. But when it comes to how it or any of Ohio’s 16 districts were drawn, he hasn’t a clue.

“I don’t really know as to the rhyme or reason for the setting up the district. I’d be interested to know.”

Every 10 years – after each U.S. Census – the 435 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives are re-distributed based on population. Then the states get to work drawing a new map of their Congressional districts. In Ohio, those boundaries are set by the state Legislature.

Who controls the maps?

In 2011 – as it was in 2001 and 1991 -- the Legislature was controlled by Republicans.

“It would be hard for the process to get any worse than it is right now in Ohio.”

That’s Kathleen Clyde. The Democrat from Kent has been in the Statehouse since 2011, when she was on

State Rep. Kathleen Clyde of Kent was in her first year in the Statehouse in 2011, during the last redistricting process. She says there was 'no transparency' in the process.

the congressional redistricting panel that drew the maps. But that doesn’t mean she had much input.

“The Republicans drew the maps in secret in a bunker in the DoubleTree Hotel in downtown Columbus. There was no input from the public. There was no transparency. And it was just as partisan a process as you can imagine.”

Then-Rep. Bob Hagan lashed out at the map Republicans drew up in secrecy in a hotel room that became known as "The bunker."

By the time the map reached the Statehouse floor, you could hear the frustration from people like then-Rep. Bob Hagan from Youngstown. The Democrat was among those who complained about how lopsided the 16 districts were.

“Stand up and object as much as you want!”

How did a simple map lead to chaos in the Statehouse? Dave Cohen of the University of Akron’s Bliss Institute of Applied Politics explains.

“They’ve drawn districts that are just simply not competitive. We know before Election Day who is going to win.”

Voting rights

There's an art and a science to redistricting. The U.S. Constitution says each state’s districts have to have about the same number of people. In Ohio, that’s translates to about 700,000 people.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 prohibits drawing districts to dilute the voting power of minorities. According to the national advocacy group, the Prison Gerrymandering Project, that leads to prisons being spliced into rural districts. That boosts the number of minorities in a district, but state law prevents anyone from voting while incarcerated.

Oberlin's Ian Yarber was born just two years after the Voting Rights Act passed. And he takes voting rights very seriously.

To read the transparency report, click here.

This report by the League of Women Voters and Ohio Citizen Action after the last redistricting outlined what happened in "the bunker," a hotel room in Columbus where GOP consultants came up with maps to then-U.S. House-Speaker John Boehner's liking.

“I don’t have to get beat or firehosed or dogs laid upon to perform that right. I believe that’s something I should do because a lot of folks gave their lives for the right to vote. ”

Packing and cracking

Political scientist Cohen says districts can also be drawn to concentrate voters based on whether they’re likely to vote for the minority or majority parties, a practice called “packing and cracking.”

“You pack as many of the minority party’s voters into those districts. And then the remaining ones you kind of crack and spread out among the majority party’s districts. By doing that, you create safe seats for everybody.”

Technology has made it possible to draw maps with such precision that next-door neighbors could end up in different districts based on how they’ll likely vote. And Cohen says that makes it difficult for the parties to compromise.

“You create an incentive to move their ideas and their actions and their votes more to the party’s extreme. Because they’re not worried about losing a general election. The only thing that they’re worried about is losing a primary election.”

There are competing ideas on how to fix the problem. One – a bipartisan commission -- comes from the League of Women Voters and other voting advocates, which is collecting signatures to get it on the November ballot. They have about half of the more than 300,000 they need.

The signature gathering continues

Volunteers next to the Salvaton Army’s bell-ringer at Zagara’s Grocery in Cleveland Heights are among those collecting more on a recent Friday evening. One of the willing signers was Roscoe Heath. He calls gerrymandering un-American.

“Whoever’s in power right now, they can pull strings the way they want to pull them and where the other side is under the tire tracks on the deal.”

Dave Cohen says partisan politics has long had a hand in congressional map drawing. But technology is accelerating its impact to breakneck speeds. He says something needs to change to keep the voters from being run over in the next redistricting cycle in 2021.

How Ohio draws its districts:

Based on the 2010 Census, Ohio has 16 Congressional seats.
Ohio's House of Representatives has 99 districts; Ohio's state Senate has 33 districts.
The state House and Senate -- with the governor's sign-off -- create the Congressional map.
The rules that apply to the map making are a U.S. Constitutional requirement that the districts have roughly the same-size population and the requirement in the federal Voting Rights Act that minority voters not be diminished through 'packing' them in one district or 'cracking' them among many.
Ohio has no special rules as some other states do that would require districts be compact or that districts do not split up cities and other 'communities of interest.'

Here's WKSU's series this weekend on "Gerrymandering: Shading the Lines"

Summit County: Four congressional districtsand no member of Congress to call its own
Snakes, ducks and toilet bowls: How's Ohio shape its congressional districts?
How'd Ohio's most liberal town end up represented by one of the nation's most conservative congressmen?
Pressure builds to change how Ohio draws its map
Other states offer other models for Ohio

The Prison Gerrymandering Project highlights the impact of the way political lines deal with prisons around the country and is advocating for change. Here's a video it put together on an Iowa contest.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzh32Zp_PYk