Ohio Voters Supported by NRAF File Merits Brief Detailing Egregious Republican Gerrymander
Contact
Brooke Lillard • Lillard@redistrictingaction.org
Washington, D.C. — In a submission today to the Ohio Supreme Court, 12 Ohio voters, supported by the National Redistricting Action Fund (NRAF), filed their merits brief as part of their lawsuit, Adams v. DeWine, asking the court to strike down the newly-enacted congressional map as a partisan gerrymander in violation of Article XIX of the Ohio Constitution, which bans maps that unduly favor or disfavor a political party or its incumbents.
“Nonpartisan experts and independent analysis have confirmed what has been obvious since we first saw this map: Ohio’s new congressional map is one of the most egregiously gerrymandered maps in the country. Worse still, Republicans in the legislature pursued this gerrymander in spite of the voter-approved constitutional reform, passed by a 3-to-1 margin in 2018, demanding better,” said Marina Jenkins, Director of Litigation and Policy for the NRAF. “Ohioans deserve a map that upholds the promise of the 2018 reform and actually reflects the will of the people -- not politicians.”
The Adams plaintiffs’ brief details the egregious nature of the Republicans’ gerrymander: The map is an extreme outlier when compared to both computer simulations and maps of other states, and is even more extreme than some of the most infamous gerrymanders seen across the country in 2011. Computer simulations run by one of the nation’s leading experts in political science show that among thousands of congressional maps drawn in accordance with constitutional requirements, 98.7 percent of the maps created fewer than 12 Republican-leaning seats. In other words, the only way to get Republicans at least 80 percent of the congressional seats is through partisan gerrymandering. Even when Ohio’s political geography is taken into account, the brief explains, Ohio’s new congressional map is an outlier in how it unnecessarily packs Democrats into as few districts as possible -- debunking an oft-used Republican justification for partisan gerrymandering in the state.
The full brief is available here.
About NRAF
The National Redistricting Action Fund (NRAF) is the 501(c)(4) affiliate of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee. The mission of the NRAF is to harness the power of people and the courts to dismantle unfair electoral maps and create a redistricting system based on democratic values. By helping to create more just and representative electoral districts across the country, we also hope to restore the public’s faith in a true representative democracy.
