Ohio Dems give GOP deadline to deal on new map

ANDY BROWNFIELD

Asso­ci­ated Press

COLUMBUS — Ohio’s Demo­c­ra­tic Party chair­man wants to know by the end of the week whether the state’s rul­ing Repub­li­cans are will­ing to com­pro­mise on a new con­gres­sional dis­trict map.

The cur­rent map, drawn by the GOP and signed into law in Sep­tem­ber, is on hold after the Ohio Supreme Court ruled on Fri­day that it is sub­ject to pos­si­ble repeal by vot­ers. Sen­ate Repub­li­cans had appro­pri­ated money to local elec­tions boards in the bill in a move they hoped would make it effec­tive imme­di­ately and shield it from repeal.

Ohio Demo­c­ra­tic Party Chair­man Chris Red­fern told reporters on Mon­day that he hoped to hear from Repub­li­cans lead­ers by Fri­day whether they were will­ing to work on “a fair map with bipar­ti­san support.”

Sen­ate Pres­i­dent Tom Niehaus spokesman John McClel­land said all options were on the table at this point.

The map came under fire from Democ­rats and voter groups, who claim it was crafted to main­tain a Repub­li­can major­ity in Ohio’s con­gres­sional delegation.

The fil­ing dead­line for con­gres­sional can­di­dates is Dec. 7 — 90 days before Ohio’s March pri­mary. The map is in legal limbo while the Demo­c­ra­tic coali­tion behind the effort col­lects sig­na­tures to put the map’s fate in the hands of vot­ers in 2012.

Despite warn­ings from House Speaker William Batchelder that the deci­sion would “throw the 2012 elec­tions into legal chaos,” experts say that it is very unlikely Ohio will enter the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion year with­out con­gres­sional districts.

If the state did noth­ing and left the old con­gres­sional dis­tricts in place — which were drawn using pop­u­la­tion counts from 2000 — Ohio would be in vio­la­tion of the U.S. Con­sti­tu­tion, said Dan Tokaji, pro­fes­sor at the Ohio State University’s Moritz Col­lege of Law. The Con­sti­tu­tion requires dis­tricts to all con­tain roughly the same amount of people.

What’s more likely is that some­body will go to the fed­eral court and ask them to draw the lines, if law­mak­ers can’t come to an agree­ment, said Justin Levitt, law pro­fes­sor and redis­trict­ing expert at the Loy­ola Law School in Los Angeles.

Red­fern said he’s will­ing to with­draw the repeal peti­tion if leg­is­la­tors could come up with a map that more accu­rately reflected Ohio’s polit­i­cal makeup, which he said was close to evenly divided between Democ­rats and Republicans.

An analy­sis by a coali­tion of voter groups claimed that the GOP’s map drew 12 dis­tricts that favored Repub­li­cans and four that favored Democrats.

Con­gres­sional dis­tricts must be redrawn every 10 years to reflect pop­u­la­tion change. Because of slow pop­u­la­tion growth, Ohio is los­ing two of its 18 U.S. House seats.

Fed­eral judges are cur­rently draw­ing the lines for four states — Min­nesota, Col­orado, New Mex­ico and Nevada, Levitt said. He said that usu­ally hap­pens because the body draw­ing the lines didn’t do it on time, couldn’t agree or the map was vetoed by the governor.

Batchelder spokesman Mike Dit­toe said the prob­lem with hav­ing fed­eral judges draw the map is that there’s a 3–1 chance they would not be from Ohio and would know very lit­tle about the state or its people.

Repub­li­can leg­isla­tive lead­ers stand by the map passed with bipar­ti­san votes, Dit­toe said. Two Democ­rats out of 10 in the 33-member Sen­ate voted for the map, while three out of 40 Democ­rats in the 99-member House signed off on it.

Hav­ing a fed­eral judge draw the map may not be in the worst inter­ests of Repub­li­cans, Levitt said.

“There will be a very heavy thumb on the scale to have the maps drawn by the leg­is­la­ture and signed off on by the gov­er­nor as a start­ing point,” he said.

Another, albeit unlikely, option would be for can­di­dates to fun in a free-for-all for all 16 seats statewide with­out any districts.

When asked if that was a pos­si­bil­ity, Tokaji laughed.

“I guess you could. I don’t think there are any con­sti­tu­tional bar­ri­ers,” he said.

Levitt said there’s a very, very slim chance of that happening.

“If you were a gam­bler, it would prob­a­bly be safe to put all of your money against that pos­si­bil­ity. To my knowl­edge, it has not hap­pened since the 1960s.”

Levitt said he was also not aware of any state in recent his­tory repeal­ing their con­gres­sional maps. Rather than risk hav­ing their maps repealed, the rul­ing party will usu­ally keep the minor­ity party happy enough to elim­i­nate the threat, he said.

In 1915, Ohio Democ­rats col­lected sig­na­tures to put the then-congressional map on the bal­lot, where it was repealed by voters.

In order to give law­mak­ers more time to craft a map — if both sides are indeed will­ing to com­pro­mise — the Gen­eral Assem­bly could push back the pri­mary elec­tion date, some­thing Red­fern advo­cated Mon­day at his news conference.

Asked if that was a pos­si­bil­ity, Niehaus spokesman McClel­land reit­er­ated that every­thing was on the table.

Posted by AP News on Oct 17 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.