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Fair Districts Coalition Slams Redistricting Commission's New Map

Andy Chow
/
Statehouse News Bureau

A coalition of voter rights advocates are slamming the maps for House and Senate districts introduced by the Ohio Redistricting Commission. An analysis by the groups say the district lines retain a Republican supermajority.

The group Fair Districts Ohio says the House and Senate district maps drawn by Republicans would create a two-thirds majority for the party in both chambers, with few to no competitive races.University of Cincinnati associate professor David Niven says the mapmakers did not meet several standards created by voter-approved reforms in 2015.

"Did they even try? Because this is a map that fails every academic test of gerrymandering. This map is almost the definition of gerrymandering."

Republican leaders in the House and Senate say they didn't know the partisan breakdown of their maps before introducing them, a claim Democratic leaders call "disingenuous."