Ohio Apportionment Board To Meet In Dayton This Thursday — All Citizens Invited To Participate

Citizens in the Dayton area who want to impact how the state should be divided into congressional districts can attend a meeting organized by The Ohio Apportionment Board on Thursday, August 25, at the old NCR building at 1700 South Patterson Rd.  The meeting starts at 10:00 AM and is scheduled to dismiss at 12:00 noon.

Jennifer Brunner’s web-site, Courage Pac, is urging voters to become “citizen legislators” and attend these regional meetings — eleven are scheduled this week (Aug. 22 – 26) across the state.  The web-site is urging:

Act now and push for these things for a fair process in redrawing the state’s district lines:

* Advance publishing of maps.  The Apportionment Board (and the Legislature when they consider congressional maps) should publish proposed maps on the Internet at least two weeks before they are voted on, to allow for public input, taking the process out of political seclusion.
* Take out the politics.  Maps can and should be drawn based on nonpartisan criteria such as preserving county boundaries and creating compact districts that are politically balanced avoiding favoring one party over another when balanced districts can be created.
* Competitive districts require legislators to be accountable to the public.  Nearly 2/3 of Ohio’s current house, senate, and congressional districts favor one political party or another by over 15%, thus practically ensuring who will be elected long before the election.
* Let the voters decide who will be elected.  61 of Ohio’s 99 state house districts favor Republicans, largely because Republican elected officials drew the districts.  When Democrats drew the districts, they also distorted the lines so that a majority of districts favored the Democrats. How about creating districts not designed with bias toward one party or the other, or if it can’t be avoided, creating as equal numbers of opposing political leaning districts as possible?
* Stop gridlock.  An artificially high number of one sided districts promotes far left or far right leaning legislators and that can promote gridlock with a battle of extreme views getting nowhere.
* Adopt a map generated from the public competition. Draw the Line Ohio is the only place where the public can draw maps that will be scored based on objective, nonpartisan criteria. Winners for the state legislative districts will be announced this week. Drawing can also be done at ReshapeOhio.org with no scoring.