Ohio House OK’s March primary, end to map flap

(Gazette | Hal­ley Miller)

ANDY BROWNFIELD

ANN SANNER

Asso­ci­ated Press

COLUMBUS — The Ohio House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives passed a com­pro­mise bill to reunite the state’s pri­mary in March and approve a new con­gres­sional map, end­ing months of polit­i­cal wran­gling in that chamber.

The 77–17 House vote came at the eleventh-hour dur­ing the chamber’s last sched­uled vot­ing day this year. It’s aimed at end­ing a dis­pute over new GOP-drawn con­gres­sional lines.

The agree­ment reached Wednes­day by law­mak­ers would repeal the cur­rent con­gres­sional lines, reunite the state’s pri­maries to a sin­gle March date and estab­lish a task force to make rec­om­men­da­tions for changes to the map­mak­ing process.

The bill is expected to be voted on by the Sen­ate later Wednes­day night.

The pri­maries were sep­a­rated in Octo­ber to give law­mak­ers more time to com­pro­mise on new con­gres­sional dis­trict bound­aries after a Republican-drawn map was chal­lenged by Democ­rats, who have been gath­er­ing sig­na­tures in an effort to ask vot­ers to repeal it on next year’s ballot.

Cur­rently, Ohio’s state, local and U.S. Sen­ate pri­maries are planned for March, but the pres­i­den­tial and U.S. House pri­maries are sched­uled to take place in June.

The agree­ment would set­tle con­cerns over Democ­rats’ ref­er­en­dum efforts, and shift the pri­mary to an ear­lier date to allow GOP vot­ers to have a stronger say in the party’s pres­i­den­tial nominee.

A sec­ond pri­mary elec­tion day would cost tax­pay­ers an addi­tional $15 million.

“This is def­i­nitely the right thing to do. We com­bine the pri­maries and save the state $15 mil­lion,”  State Rep. Andrew Bren­ner (R-Powell), said. “I also think vot­ers will like this map better.”

Ear­lier Wednes­day, Karla Her­ron of the Ohio Asso­ci­a­tion of Elec­tion Offi­cials told a House panel that her orga­ni­za­tion endorses a sin­gle pri­mary date. One date would elim­i­nate voter con­fu­sion, alle­vi­ate any prob­lems with prepar­ing vot­ing equip­ment twice, and keep offi­cials from hav­ing to recruit poll work­ers for a sec­ond time.

The new map does con­tain “sub­stan­tial” changes from the con­gres­sional map that law­mak­ers passed in Sep­tem­ber, said Lima Repub­li­can Rep. Matt Huff­man, the map’s House sponsor.

Among key revi­sions, the new map would unify seven coun­ties that were pre­vi­ously split, reduce splits in two coun­ties from three to two and split one county that was pre­vi­ously whole. It also increases the black voting-age pop­u­la­tions of urban dis­tricts in Day­ton, Colum­bus, Cincin­nati and Toledo.

Both maps would cre­ate 16 dis­tricts — 12 favor­ing Repub­li­cans and four favor­ing Democ­rats. The state is los­ing two con­gres­sional seats due to slow pop­u­la­tion growth.

The once-per-decade process of redraw­ing con­gres­sional maps comes after each cen­sus to reflect changes in pop­u­la­tion. Because of slow pop­u­la­tion growth com­pared with other parts of the coun­try, Ohio is los­ing two of its 18 U.S. House seats.

Posted by AP News on Dec 14 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.