Both sides insist judge make Ohio remap choice

ANDY BROWNFIELD

Asso­ci­ated Press

COLUMBUS — With time run­ning out to move the state’s pres­i­den­tial and U.S. House pri­maries back to March, an Ohio con­gress­man is ask­ing a judge to put con­tested GOP-drawn con­gres­sional lines into place immediately.

The state Demo­c­ra­tic Party is try­ing to put the map’s fate before vot­ers next year and has asked for a law­suit by a Repub­li­can voter over the bound­aries to be dropped, paint­ing it as premature.

Both have joined a suit filed in Octo­ber by Belinda Ward of Batavia, which asks Cler­mont County Com­mon Pleas Judge Jerry McBride to draw the dis­tricts himself.

McBride is set to meet Fri­day with lawyers with a stake in the case’s out­come. They include the attor­ney for Ward, as well as rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Ohio Sec­re­tary of State’s office, U.S. Rep. Steve LaTourette’s office, and both the Demo­c­ra­tic and Repub­li­can national com­mit­tees in Washington.

Dis­cus­sion is likely to sur­round how aggres­sive a time frame to set in the case, said Ward attor­ney Joseph Braun.

Once every decade law­mak­ers need to draw new con­gres­sional dis­tricts to reflect changes in pop­u­la­tion. Because of slow pop­u­la­tion growth, Ohio’s U.S. House del­e­ga­tion shrunk from 18 to 16.

To reflect that, Ohio’s rul­ing Repub­li­cans approved a new map in Sep­tem­ber — a map that Democ­rats and voter groups say favors GOP incum­bents with 12 safe seats of 16.

When Democ­rats launched a repeal effort, leav­ing the map’s future uncer­tain, Ward filed a law­suit in the GOP strong­hold of Cler­mont County ask­ing a judge to draw the map since the two par­ties couldn’t come to an agreement.

LaTourette, a Repub­li­can, joined the law­suit in Novem­ber, ask­ing the judge to put the GOP-drawn lines passed in Sep­tem­ber into place imme­di­ately. Court doc­u­ments filed by his lawyer say the lines need to be in place by Dec. 7 — the fil­ing dead­line for the March 6 pri­mary — so the judge should use the ones already approved by Ohio’s elected officials.

Law­mak­ers voted in Octo­ber to split the 2012 pri­mary elec­tions in two, with House and pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates fac­ing elec­tions in June and all other can­di­dates — includ­ing U.S. Sen­ate con­tenders — fac­ing elec­tions in March.

Repub­li­cans sought to reunite the pri­maries in a later bill attached to a revised con­gres­sional map, but the leg­is­la­tion was blocked by Democ­rats still dis­sat­is­fied with the lines. The move to June was intended to allow extra time ahead of the impor­tant 2012 elec­tion in a key swing state, but crit­ics say hold­ing two pri­maries is both con­fus­ing and costly.

Matt McClel­lan, a spokesman for elec­tions chief Jon Husted, said the office has been advis­ing all can­di­dates to file their paper­work by Dec. 7 on the advice of the Leg­is­la­ture. Under party rules, some del­e­gates that help deter­mine pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates — whether Demo­c­ra­tic Pres­i­dent Barack Obama or Repub­li­cans fac­ing off in the pri­mary — are based on con­gres­sional dis­tricts. With­out final lines, those deter­mi­na­tions can’t be made.

Democ­rats have joined the Cler­mont County law­suit in hopes of get­ting McBride to throw it out.

Ohioans for Fair Dis­tricts, a group headed by Ohio Demo­c­ra­tic Party Chair­man Chris Red­fern, says that the law­suit was filed prematurely.

Democ­rats have until Christ­mas Day to sub­mit the more than 231,000 sig­na­tures nec­es­sary to put the map’s fate before vot­ers in 2012. If they fail to gather enough, then the GOP map is put into place and the law­suit is mean­ing­less, the group argues in court filings.

LaTourette Chief of Staff Dino Disanto and Don­ald McTigue, lawyer for Ohioans for Fair Dis­tricts, declined to com­ment while the case is ongoing.

Some legal experts agree with Democ­rats that the law­suit was filed too early.

Dan Tokaji, redis­trict­ing expert and pro­fes­sor at the Moritz Col­lege of Law at the Ohio State Uni­ver­sity, said the con­tro­versy isn’t really ripe until Democ­rats dis­cover if they have enough sup­port for a repeal effort.

He said hav­ing a judge imple­ment the GOP-drawn lines — as LaTourette has asked — would usurp Ohioans’ right under the state con­sti­tu­tion to chal­lenge laws they don’t agree with.

“The law­suit seems to be the wrong relief here,” he said.

Michael McDon­ald, head of the United States Elec­tions Project at George Mason Uni­ver­sity, also said the suit may be premature.

“The courts gen­er­ally pre­fer to stay out of the polit­i­cal thicket when they can. Even­tu­ally the courts will get involved, but it doesn’t sound like they have to yet,” he said.

McDon­ald added, how­ever, that it wasn’t unwise of Ward to file the lit­i­ga­tion before Democ­rats turned in their sig­na­tures to repeal the map.

“You want lit­i­ga­tion pro­ceed­ing so you have a chal­lenge to the cur­rent map before it takes effect,” he said. “They may start the legal process for­ward so if they do have to move they can do so quickly.”

In an ear­lier fil­ing, Kasich asked to be dis­missed from the law­suit, argu­ing he had no part in draw­ing the lines — only signed the bill estab­lish­ing them.

Posted by AP News on Dec 1 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.