Every ten years, the ruling political party sets about redrawing congressional districts, a detailed process that amounts to spreading a map of Ohio on a table and rolling over it with a pizza cutter. The point is to give your team the upper hand in upcoming elections. And although the cherished pastime probably won’t be going away soon, one Ohio group hopes to spark redistricting reform by hosting a little competition.
The Ohio Campaign for Accountable Redistricting will hold a contest this summer inviting anyone to use 2010 census data to redraw the districts. Their goal is to shave the politics off the process and illustrate that redistricting can be approached straight-up, without the partisan chaser.
“This demonstrates that you can use fair and objective criteria,” says Jim Slagle, the campaign’s manager. “We would like to plant the seeds for future reform.”
This article appears in Jun 1-7, 2011.
Ohio really needs a nonpartisan districting commission that draws balanced, logical district lines that keep communities together and doesn’t have districts like 6 that sprawl across half the state. Ohio is fairly evenly split between the two major parties so districts should never produce the sort of imbalance we see in the state senate.