At the Ohio Apportionate Board public meeting today at the University of Dayton, the acting chair, State Auditor, David Yost, I thought set an affable tone. No doubt his agreeable personality has been a big boost to his political career.
Every ten years, after the results of the U.S. census are affirmed, Ohio’s 99 House Districts and 33 Senate Districts are redrawn so that districts have approximately the same populations. For this reapportionment, each House District should contain 116,530 citizens and each Senate District should contain 349,590. The board is holding 11 meetings this week around the state to hear from citizens about how best to organize the state into legislative districts. At the Dayton meeting about 50 people were in attendance and there were interesting comments from a stream of citizens. Yost reminded speakers that his committee deals only with the state legislature, not the federal.
The first to speak was Martin Gottlieb, who surprised me by saying he recently had retired as editorial and political writer of the Dayton Daily News. I hadn’t realized he had retired. I will miss his columns. Gottlieb pointed out that Montgomery County is fairly evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats, but none of the five House Districts in Montgomery County ever have competitive races. He pointed out that the sixth Senate District is ridiculously shaped, as if making a doughnut around Dayton, “in search of Republican voters.”
Darrell Fairchild, of Lift Greater Dayton I thought made the most compelling statements. He evidently works with a lot of poor people. He said Montgomery County’s legislative districts should be divided in a more balanced way so that people who he works with are encouraged to participate in their democracy. Speaking from a wheel chair, he said that he experiences much apathy towards democracy because people feel the system is fixed, and feel their engagement would make no difference. Fairchild pointed out that the Apportionate Board, itself, is fixed — with a membership that has a 4 to 1 advantage for the Republicans.
I hadn’t planned on speaking, but at the last minute decided to do so. I was the last speaker and pointed out that though Kettering is much smaller than the size of one House District, we are divided into two districts. I pointed out it is not obvious where the lines are drawn because people living in the same zip code have different representatives. My point was that House Districts should have some geographic logic.
One thing I learned was that the Ohio Constitution agrees with the point I attempted to make — districts should have geographic logic. Some people I spoke with after the meeting indicated that, in their judgment, the 2001 apportionment was unconstitutional and that in 2001 there should have been a court challenge to the actions of the Apportionate Board. The feeling is that this year, unless there is a big improvement in the results of the Apportionate Board, the constitutionality of the results will have a court challenge.
Politically based apportionment of legislative districts, combined with private funding of election campaigns that makes legislatures for sale to the highest bidder, are great threats to any kind of democracy. Voters have been apathetic and mistrustful about reform efforts, and the political parties prefer to struggle for decade long unfair advantage. The Ohio Supreme Court is less balanced politically than the reapportionment board. Yet Ohio voters are relatively balanced politically, with turnout making the difference in most elections. This leads to huge swings in power. However if districts are drawn so that your vote doesn’t really matter, one way or another, democracy and public willingness to be emotionally engaged in important decisions falters. Politicians are choosing voters rather than the other way around. This means community organizations that care about democracy and the media must keep on this issue.