The Columbus Dispatch - January 18, 2012 10:01 AM

  The list of priority legislation for House Republicans this year did not include an effort to revamp Ohio’s hyper-partisan process for drawing legislative and congressional districts.
“Interesting,” Speaker William G. Batchelder said with a laugh when reminded that the issue was not among those discussed during a press conference yesterday to highlight past accomplishments and what leaders hope to tackle in 2012. “That was all the newspapers could talk about for awhile there.”

As part of the congressional map deal passed in December, a new legislative task force was created to examine an alternative way of drawing district lines, and a recommendation is due by the end of June.

Under the current system, the legislature draws the congressional map and the five-member state Apportionment Board draws legislative maps. The ruling party gerrymanders the lines to its own maximum benefit, often crafting a host of uncompetitive districts, so in a state like Ohio that is politically competitive, Republicans, for example, have a solid chance to win 12 of 16 congressional seats.

Secretary of State Jon Husted, a coalition of nonpartisan organizations, and a small, bipartisan group of lawmakers is pushing for a fairer way to draw the maps.

“I personally would think it would be an advisable thing to look at,” said Batchelder, R-Medina. “There was plenty of hoo-ray over the last one, but I did notice I had (77) votes. More Democrats voted for that than voted against it. So I understand the concern of the media and some college faculty members, but it doesn’t really seem to have caused people to think that if they voted for it, they’d lose their jobs.”

Democrats agreed to pass a slightly revised congressional map after their efforts to collect enough signatures to referendum a prior GOP-passed map was falling short.

“I have no idea where we’ll get with it. It’s something, over the years, that has been very difficult,” Batchelder said, pointing to California’s situation where an appointed panel drew maps and “there are more people mad about that than are in favor of it. It’s not like this is something out of the New Testament.”

The last time voters invoked the option was in 1912. That year, a constitutional convention approved such useful measures as the initiative and referendum, which enable voters to enact laws directly and to affirm or repeal laws passed by the General Assembly.

Over the past century, though, Ohioans have repeatedly rejected statewide conventions in favor of various blue- ribbon panels that proposed constitutional changes to lawmakers and ultimately to voters. There is such a body this year -- the Ohio Constitutional Modernization Commission, composed of 12 state legislators and 20 other Ohioans whom the lawmakers will appoint.

The panel will be in business for the next decade. Commissioners deserve every opportunity to pursue the thorough reforms that Ohio's constitution, enacted in 1851, needs. But if they show an unwillingness or inability this year to do that job, then voters will have to take the process into their own hands.

The current constitution is larded with obsolete language and special-interest provisions. It needs a top-to-bottom review of the powers and duties it defines for state government, not just patching and tweaking.

Opponents of a constitutional convention warn of the dangers of a "runaway" process, in which extremist interest groups would seize control and ram through ill-advised constitutional amendments. They contend that convention delegates would not be as qualified or experienced as the experts on the commission in proposing reforms.

Such an alarmist, and elitist, viewpoint seems to underestimate the capacities of Ohio's citizens, especially when you consider the recent performance of the General Assembly. Commission members will have to show, not merely assert, that their way is better.

Commission advocates note that its bipartisan composition will prevent it from offering overtly partisan proposals (of course, the same kind of structure prevented the congressional budget "super-committee" from doing anything). Any proposed amendment must attract the support of two-thirds of the panel's members, another supposed check against one-sided proposals that voters likely would reject.

Three credible northwest Ohio lawmakers sit on the panel: outgoing Republican state Sen. Mark Wagoner of Ottawa Hills and Reps. Matt Huffman of Lima, a Republican, and Dennis Murray of Sandusky, a Democrat. The quality of the other commission members the legislators on the panel will name will provide an immediate clue to its seriousness. So will the openness, or secrecy, with which it does its business.

Most important, though, will be the quality of the constitutional reforms the commission proposes. Some possibilities: A more-effective means of drawing the state's congressional and legislative maps than the current outrageous political gerrymanders. A fairer method of school taxation. Meaningful, not partisan, changes to election rules. A better way to select state judges.

Any one of these reforms would be a big job, and lawmakers have shown a distressing tendency in recent years to expect voters to do the heavy lifting on difficult issues. If the modernization commission defaults on its duties, voters must be ready to step in.

The Toledo Blade Company

 

  Although lawmakers agreed last month on a bill that carves out 16 new congressional district maps, the arguing over how Ohio should draw legislative and congressional maps is not dying down.

This week, Secretary of State Jon Husted, a Republican who has been pushing for reform for seven years, urged House Speaker William Batchelder, R-Medina, to consider revamping the process as part of an overall update of the Ohio Constitution.

“There are many ways to improve upon the partisan, dysfunctional system that currently exists,” Husted wrote to Batchelder and members of the Constitutional Modernization Commission. “In my view, we need to find the right balance between three important virtues: compactness, competitiveness and maintaining communities of interest.”

Husted said the reforms could be accomplished through either the modernization commission or the special commission established in House Bill 369, which set the new districts. He said working through these two entities could position Ohio to have a proposed constitutional amendment by Aug. 8 so that it can go before voters in November.

“If we do not act, I believe outside groups will move forward with their own plans, without the benefit of the public input process and thorough review the Constitutional Modernization Commission is capable of providing,” Husted said.

Indeed, a coalition of election reform groups sent a letter to legislative leaders this week, calling for a non-partisan citizens panel to draw the political maps — not a bipartisan panel loaded with politicians who may have conflicts of interest.

The group, which includes the League of Women Voters of Ohio and Common Cause Ohio, said it is working on a constitutional amendment to present to voters this fall.

In 2005, Ohio voters defeated four citizen-initiated election reform proposals, including one that would have created a new legislative district drawing authority.

Currently, the redistricting processes are controlled by the majority party in power after the U.S. Census is taken. The Ohio Apportionment Board, which consists of the governor, secretary of state, state auditor, House speaker and Senate president, draws legislative maps and the General Assembly draws congressional maps.
 

A “Big Lump of Coal” for Ohio citizens 

Columbus, OH – Ohio citizen groups today released an analysis of the new Congressional districts approved by the state legislature and signed by the Governor last week (HB 369). The plan’s final score was just 53 — worse than all 53 citizen-drawn plans submitted in the competition sponsored by the Ohio Campaign for Accountable Redistricting, a coalition led by the League of Women Voters and Ohio Citizen Action

“This plan is a partisan gerrymander by any definition,” said Catherine Turcer of Ohio Citizen Action. “Just like the previous plan, it packs Democrats into four districts, leaving 12 that favor Republicans. The new districts aren’t compact and don’t respect community boundaries. The fact that this is a sweetheart deal, which some Democratic politicians signed off on, doesn’t make it any better.”

The citizen groups’ analysis finds that, like the previously approved plan (HB 319), there are zero heavily competitive districts under the new plan. By contrast, there are 11 heavily competitive districts under the plan drawn by the Ohio Redistricting Competition winner, State Rep. Mike Fortner (R-West Chicago, IL).

“Democracy requires that voters have a voice in selecting who represents them, and this plan takes away our voice,” said Ann Henkener, Redistricting Specialist for the League of Women Voters of Ohio.

The districts drawn in the new plan are not compact. In fact, its compactness score is 33.38, even worse than the previous plan, which scored 34.5.

Some other key findings of today’s analysis:

•The plan splits many counties, with a total of 54 county splits. By contrast, the winning plan drawn by Rep. Fortner has just 9 county splits.
•There are only three generally competitive districts under the new Congressional map. This is just one more than the previously approved plan. These three districts are barely competitive; all are 54% Republican.
•When all factors are considered, the new map is worse than all 53 plans submitted to the Ohio Redistricting Competition. The top ten citizen plans submitted during the Ohio Redistricting Competition had scores ranging from 193 to 222, compared to just 53 for the new plan.
“The Republicans and Democrats who voted for this plan should all be ashamed of themselves,” said Dan Tokaji, a law professor at The Ohio State University. “When Rep. Huffman announced the new congressional districts, he called it ‘a Christmas gift’ for Ohioans. We can only assume he was joking. The state legislature has left nothing but a big lump of coal in the stockings of all Ohio citizens.”

The citizen groups, along with Professor Tokaji and Professor Dick Gunther of OSU, also criticized the process by which the new map was drawn. It was announced on Wednesday and approved by a majority of the legislature that day. This left no opportunity for analysis or public comment on the plan.

“The abysmal process we’ve seen this year highlights the need for an independent citizens’ commission to redraw Ohio’s district lines,” said Professor Gunther. “Incumbent politicians can’t be trusted with the mapmakers’ pen. That power should be returned to the people of Ohio.”

Comments: 36 ShareThis Even the 450 members of Russia’s Duma are elected from districts that are fairer and more competitive than the 16 congressional districts drawn by Republicans controlling the Statehouse, an Ohio State University political scientist has concluded.

Richard Gunther today called the new congressional map signed into law last week by Gov. John Kasich “stunning” for its representational unfairness, saying it is twice as unfair as the next-worst democratic systems in the world.

“This is a very, very bad map,” said Gunther, a scholar of world democracies. “This is extremely unfair to the citizens of Ohio.”

Gunther and Daniel Tokaji, an OSU law professor specializing in election law, spoke at a news conference sponsored by a nonpartisan watchdog organization, the Ohio Campaign for Accountable Redistricting, to decry the secretive process of redrawing new congressional and legislative districts every 10 years and the outcome that resulted this year.

Referring to Ohio’s new congressional districts, Tokaji said, “This is the worst example of elected officials serving their own craven partisan interests of anywhere in the country.”

The group is exploring ways to remove the line-drawing process from politicians, including going to the November ballot with a referendum that would create a citizens commission to redraw congressional and legislative districts in 2013 for elections that would take place in 2014.

Under the current system, 16 members of Congress, 33 state senators and 99 Ohio House members will be elected in November to districts that will be in place for the rest of this decade.

Members of the Ohio Campaign for Accountable Redistricting — comprised of 25 nonpartisan groups such as the League of Women Voters of Ohio and Citizen Action Ohio — acknowledged that raising the minimum $2 million they believe is needed for a successful petition drive is a high hurdle.

The group’s analysis of the 16 new congressional districts found that just three of them are somewhat competitive, showing they favor GOP candidates from between 7.7 percentage points to 8.7 percentage points. Five districts were deemed noncompetitive, with partisan indexes favoring Republicans by 10-and-15 percentage points, and eight were highly noncompetitive, with four favoring Republicans and four favoring Democrats by margins of 15-to-59 percentage points.

Using an “electoral disproportionality” scale that compares established democracies around the world, Gunther said Ohio’s new districts are by far the worst in terms of representational unfairness. The average electoral disproportionality score among those democracies is 5, including for the U.S. as a whole. Canada and France score the worst, each at 12, but Ohio’s score is twice as unfair as those.

Even the Duma, the lower house of parliament in Russia — a questionable democracy — earns a score of 7 against Ohio’s 24 on the scale.

Gunther said any fair congressional district map should include three principles: competitiveness, compactness and keeping intact communities of interest.

“This map brutally violates all three of those principles,” Gunther said.

The group’s analysis of the congressional map also found:

There are 54 counties split into at least two districts, with seven split into three or more.

Republicans are virtually assured of winning 12 of the 16 districts, or 75 percent of them, even though Ohio is almost evenly split between Democrats and Republicans. The new map packs Democratic voters into four districts, giving the party majorities of between 62-and-80 percent.

Using criteria such as compactness, communities of interest and competitiveness, the new map is worse than all 53 submitted by citizens in a competition sponsored by the Ohio Campaign for Accountable Redistricting. The top 10 citizen plans had scores ranging from 193 to 222, compared to just 53 for the new map.

jhallett@dispatch.com

On Wednesday, the Lima Republican called a bill that lays out new congressional districts “a little bit of a Christmas gift to the folks of Ohio.”

No fair-minded Santa would ever deliver it.

This gift virtually ensures that Huffman’s party will control 12 of Ohio’s 16 districts through this decade.

This gift mocks the goal of keeping together communities of interest. The new 15 {+t}{+h} district, for example, combines big swaths of Appalachia with Upper Arlington and Downtown Columbus.

This gift makes hash out of redistricting principles such as compactness and contiguousness. Summit County is ridiculously spliced into four districts. The new 9 {+t}{+h} district, stretching along a sliver of Lake Erie shoreline from Toledo to Cleveland, needs a bridge to be connected and is drawn solely to pit incumbent Democrats Marcy Kaptur and Dennis J. Kucinich against each other.

This gift eliminates the need for general elections in congressional races. Many primaries will be coronations for extremists, rendering to the wilderness the desires of Ohio’s vast political center.

This gift protects incumbents by allowing them to choose their voters.

This gift is the worst possible Christmas present for Ohioans, relegating them to another decade of bad government.

This gift was wrapped by Republicans controlling the Statehouse. Make no mistake, if Democrats were in charge, you’d be receiving the same gift, wrapped in blue instead of red.

The only worthwhile gift surrounding the decennial process of creating new congressional districts is the one by a courageous watchdog group exposing the sordid and secretive — and maybe even illegal — ways in which it was done.

The Ohio Campaign for Accountable Redistricting — 25 good-government organizations, including the League of Women Voters of Ohio and Ohio Citizen Action — used public records to pull back the cover on a process whose aim was “to gain maximum political advantage” for the GOP, the group reported.

“The result was the approval of new districts that will provide for largely predetermined elections where we will know which party will win before we even know who the candidates are.”

A glance at the partisan indexes of the 16 districts proves that point: The most “competitive” is the new 6th District sprawling along the Ohio River, where Republicans have only a 7.7 percentage-point advantage.

The redistricting map enacted in September — with minor alterations approved last week — was drawn out of public view in a Downtown hotel room that Republicans called the “bunker” and paid for with $10,000 of your money. Two GOP legislative veterans, Ray DiRossi and Heather Mann, concocted the contorted maps, each earning $105,000 in about three months — also your money.

The shots were being called by Tom Whatman, a top political aide to U.S. House Speaker John Boehner of West Chester, whose aim is to gerrymander a national map to improve GOP chances of becoming a permanent House majority. Accommodations to maximize fundraising were made to include the Timken Co. in Rep. Jim Renacci’s Canton-area district (he’s already received $210,000 from company officials) and to include Downtown Columbus in Rep. Steve Stivers’ 15 {+t}{+h} district.

Clark County was removed from the 15 {+t}{+h} because it might make it slightly more competitive than the current 13-point GOP advantage. A last-minute change was made to split Mercer County into three congressional districts so state Sen. Keith Faber’s home could be moved into the 4 {+t}{+h} District in case he might want that seat.

“This is not a map that is about the voters of Ohio,” said Catherine Turcer of Citizen Action.

Redistricting never will be about the voters unless they take the process away from the politicians. That would be a perfect Christmas gift.

Joe Hallett is senior editor at The Dispatch.

As to the 16 districts, Republicans conceded some face-saving tweaks to Democrats, including a better chance for two African-American representatives to go to Washington and a less fractured Dayton area. The tweaks also leave U.S. Rep. Marcy Kaptur's Toledo base more intact -- and thus more challenging to win for Cleveland's Rep. Dennis Kucinich, who loses only a part of his base in the reshuffling (and no one should write off Kucinich, who has more political lives than a cat).

Overall, the tweaks drew enough "yes" votes from General Assembly Democrats to declare the redistricting plan an emergency measure, letting it take immediate effect. Moreover, emergency measures are not subject to referendum, which seems to be Ohio Democrats' preferred political weapon at the moment.

House Bill 369 still represents a sweeping victory for Republicans. In today's politics, there are few sure things. But it is possible, perhaps likely, that next November the GOP will capture 12 of the 16 districts, with just four left to Democrats. That far outstrips Republicans' overall weight in Ohio.

U.S. House Speaker John Boehner, a suburban Cincinnati Republican who helped script what happened in Columbus, must be well pleased with his Statehouse troupe, whose star is Ohio House Speaker William Batchelder, a Medina Republican.

The fight that produced House Bill 369 had two virtues, if they may be called that. It exposed Statehouse Republican toadying to Boehner. And it let Ohio House Democrats show how redistricting, as it is now done, must change. True, some of those Democrats spurned reforms when they had the power to pass them. But the blame game is pointless. What's at stake isn't the past, but the future.

In that regard, the bill creates a Redistricting Reform Task Force, composed 50-50 of General Assembly Republicans and Democrats. It's required to propose a congressional redistricting reform plan by June 30. Too often in Columbus, task forces and studies are used to slide a pressing problem off center stage. That must not happen this time, on this topic. If the last four months proved anything, it's that Ohio's redistricting mechanism is not only outdated. It's outrageous.

Related topics: dennis kucinich, general assembly, john boehner, john kasich, marcy kaptur, ohio congressional districts, redistricting, redistricting reform task force, substitute house bill 369, william batchelder

Documents obtained through a public records request by the Ohio Campaign for Accountable Redistricting show Tom Whatman, executive director of a congressional campaign effort called Team Boehner, legislative leaders, mapmaking consultants and the National Republican Congressional Committee participating in the process.

The correspondence includes a pledge by GOP Senate President Tom Niehaus to deliver “a map that Speaker Boehner fully supports.” As the process kicked off this summer, William Batchelder, Republican speaker of the Ohio House, had said he would be open to suggestions from Boehner — as well as from U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich, a Democrat.

Coalition representative Jim Slagle said there’s no question that the map was gerrymandered to favor a Republican majority. He said at a Monday news conference that there was no evidence in emails that the GOP was concerned about good-government mapmaking principles such as keeping counties whole or keeping like voters together.

“We have politicians choosing their voters instead of the other way around,” he said.

Messages were left seeking comment with Boehner’s office and Republicans in the Ohio Senate and House.

As the unveiling of the Republicans’ congressional map neared, Whatman was averaging a request a day, including a suggested boundary change affecting the Canton-based Timken Co., led by a prolific Republican political donor.

“Guys: really really sorry to ask but can we do a small carve out down 77 in Canton and put Timken in the 16th (district),” Whatman wrote on Sept. 12. After the request is approved, Whatman replies, “Thanks guys. Very important to someone important to us all.”

In September, Ohio’s ruling Republicans approved a new redistricting map, and the Ohio Democratic Party is seeking to challenge the map at the polls next year. Democrats have until Christmas to submit the necessary signatures.

Many Democrats fought the map’s passage on grounds it was weighted too heavily toward majority Republicans. Analysis by the voter advocacy coalition found 12 of 16 congressional districts on the new map favor Republicans, the other four Democrats — and Democrats argue that the state is roughly 50/50 between Democrats and Republicans.

The map is redrawn every 10 years to reflect population shifts. Ohio is losing two seats in Congress because of slow population growth.

The Ohio Campaign for Accountable Redistricting, a coalition of 25 Ohio groups, used the documents to assemble a report released Monday called “The Elephant in the Room.” It details the behind-the-scenes political machinations used in crafting the new map. Records included emails between the map’s designers, transcripts of public meetings and payment records.

The report claims that Republicans in charge of drawing the map created districts “that will provide for largely predetermined elections where we will know which party will win before we even know who the candidates are.”

It says the mapmakers looked at elections where Democrats won by large percentages when judging the districts they created, “so that Republican candidates could safely win a solid majority of districts even in a heavily Democratic year.”

Emails between the people crafting the map and Whatman, executive director of Team Boehner, show Whatman weighing in on designs and making requests. Team Boehner is an organization created early this year to help congressional Republicans facing election contests in 2012 maintain their majority in the U.S. House.

In one instance, an email chain between Whatman, one of the mapmakers and the redistricting coordinator for the National Republican Congressional Committee shows Whatman making a request a day before the map was introduced to the Ohio House.

The report said this resulted in a peninsula added onto the district that contained zero population but the headquarters of a company whose executives and board members have contributed more than $120,000 to Republican U.S. Rep. Jim Renacci in the last two years.

The extension keeps Timken’s headquarters and manufacturing plant in Renacci’s district.

The coalition said that the maps were drawn in secret despite lawmakers’ promises of an open, transparent process.

Receipts and emails show $9,600 in taxpayer money was used to rent a Columbus hotel room for 91 days to use as a headquarters for drawing the map.

The report said that the purpose of the hotel room — referred to in emails as the “bunker” — was “to ensure that no one could gain access to the redistricting plans and to provide a place where those drawing the maps could meet with interested parties without being seen by other staff.”

While the coalition released 176 pages of documents obtained through their records request, they say a number of public officials — including Batchelder, Boehner and House Communications Director Mike Dittoe — have yet to respond. They also say that “significant records have been withheld on the basis of attorney-client privilege.”

COLUMBUS, Ohio – The Ohio Campaign for Accountable Redistricting has scored the Ohio legislature’s proposed redistricting map, HB 319, against the ones received for its competition. HB 319 scores lower than any of the 53 competition maps submitted by private citizens. The Ohio Campaign has also announced the winning maps from the Redistricting Competition.

The districts as proposed in HB 319 pack Democratic voters into four districts, leaving eight districts favoring Republicans.Only two districts are competitive, as opposed to 11 under the top citizen plan. The proposed plan creates 68 county fragments, as compared to nine in the top citizen plan.

“The districts create a new standard for Gerrymandering,” stated Jim Slagle, Manager of the Ohio Campaign for Accountable Redistricting, which is a coalition of 25 Ohio organizations, led by the League of Women Voters of Ohio and Ohio Citizen Action. “The voters don’t deserve a map which would be awarded the booby prize if it were entered in the Ohio Redistricting Competition.”

The winning map was drawn by Mike Fortner, a sitting Illinois state representative, Republican spokesperson for the Illinois House Redistricting Committee, and Associate Professor of Physics at Northern Illinois University. Fortner’s map and other winners were submitted to the Ohio legislature for consideration.

The competition allowed citizens to draw congressional district lines using publicly available software and the same population and voting data that is being used by Ohio public officials. The District Builder software – web-based, open-source map drawing tool – is developed by the Public Mapping Project and supported by Metro Chicago Information Center.

“The quality of the plans submitted and the number of citizens who spent countless hours determining the fairest way to create new congressional districts was remarkable,” stated Ann Henkener, Redistricting Specialist with the League of Women Voters of Ohio.

All maps submitted during the competition are available on line at www.drawthelineohio.org. HB 319 can also be viewed on an interactive webpage via District Builder.

Midwest Democracy Network partner organizations throughout the region have been pushing innovative techniques for regular citizens to be involved in the redistricting process, and informing what changes could be made to improve the process in years to come.

“Across our region, people are looking to their elected officials for help in addressing the economic and societal challenges we face,” said Leah Rush, executive director of Midwest Democracy Network. “If we can lift the veil of secrecy and introduce new standards for the redistricting process that will be used for decades to come, we can kick-start a more meaningful dialogue between the public and public officials.”

Partner groups in Minnesota are using multiple approaches to impact redistricting:

· Common Cause Minnesota is also hosting a competition at DrawMinnesota.org, built on the open-source District Builder software. The winning maps will be submitted to the state’s official redistricting panel in October. Members of the public can provide their own testimony to the committee at one of the upcoming hearings by calling 855-245-0849. More information is available at DrawMinnesota.org.

· The Minnesota Citizens Redistricting Commission is an independent body created by Draw the Line Minnesota (a collaboration of the League of Women Voters Minnesota, Minnesota Council of Nonprofits, TakeAction Minnesota, and Common Cause Minnesota) which will produce maps through an open, fair, and participatory process that can inform the courts about this year’s maps, and be a model for future redistricting reforms after this year’s process concludes. The Commission – made up of individuals from across the political and professional spectrums – is gathering testimony at public meetings throughout August and September before submitting their own map to the state’s redistricting panel in October. The next meetings will take place in Maple Grove, MN on Wednesday, September 14; and St. Paul, MN on Monday, September 19. More information is available at Draw the Line Minnesota.

The Illinois Campaign for Political Reform has released a report on this year’s redistricting process called, “Mapping in the Dark: Politics as Usual Under a Façade of Transparency,” which chronicles the new legislation, public hearings, and end product of Illinois redistricting since late 2009. Though early reforms were praised by the Illinois legislature, when it came time to draw the maps, majority Democrats, like their predecessors, “once again relegated citizens to the sidelines, pushing through maps that furthered their political goals but which few residents had time to see, let alone review,” according to the release from the Campaign. The report also outlined recommendations and policies the legislature can adopt to make the next redistricting cycle more open in Illinois. Download the full report on their website.

For more information on redistricting in the Midwest, visit drawthelinemidwest.org.

"It's time we get passed the hyper-partisan political decision making in drawing districts," said Meg Flack with the League of Women Voters.

Flack said that there's an advantage to allowing citizens and not politicians draw fair districts.

"The advantage is for the voters," Flack said. "It's putting the constituents first rather than the party."

The group announced that a Republican lawmaker from Illinois, Mike Fortner, had submitted the winning map. He'll receive $1,000 for his entry.

Jim Slagle from the Ohio Campaign for Accountable Redistricting said that Fortner's map should be used by lawmakers to draw more competitive and fair districts.

"Sometimes public officials don't like to have the public in control," Sagle said. "We think the maps ought to be drawn for the public's benefit and the public ought to be driving this process."

Slagle said that allowing lawmakers to draw their own lines has resulted in tilted election results in Ohio in 18 of the last 20 statewide elections.

Slagle also complains that the reapportionment committee has yet to publicly post any ideas they're considering, Heath reported.

"We're going to continue to request that the reapportionment board make maps public that they wish to consider. Post them on the internet. Put them under the same scrutiny that we put our maps to," Slagle said.

No one expects Republicans, who control both the House and Senate, to adopt maps that give up their edge.

However, the non-partisan groups hope the public will demand a fairer process before any final decisions are mapped later this year.

A contest for Ohio congressional lines is still going on.