Tagged: Redistricting

Ohio voters have rejected a proposal to change the process for redrawing state legislative and congressional maps.

Issue 2 lost after a fight that pitted voter advocacy groups and unions against business interests and the Ohio Republican Party. Lawyers' groups split on the issue.

The constitutional amendment would have created a 12-member citizen commission to redraw Ohio's political districts every decade. It was prompted by discontent over the maps approved by the state Legislature in 2011.

Alongside the Presidential nomination process, the most prominent American political news stories these days are about the heated, high-stakes struggles over redistricting. The modern era of reapportioning state and federal legislative districts began almost exactly a half century ago when the U.S. Supreme Court decided Baker v. Carr (1962).

New U.S. House districts proposed by Ohio Republicans include one that stretches from Toledo to Cleveland, and a crescent touching parts of 13 counties from Appalachia to Amish country.

In the Miami Valley, Republicans Mike Turner and Steve Austria would both be in the new 10th state district.

Democrats lined up to criticize such boundary decisions Tuesday, as the eagerly-awaited map was described.