Ohio redistricting thread

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One question I have is would the new Conservative OH Court majority have any ability to block a redistricting commission from getting on the ballot, or somehow strike it down as unconstitutional if successfully passed? No state courts have ever struck down a redistricting commission via ballot initiative before, but we have seen weak commissions such as that in UT made powerless by the state legislature.

In Ohio ballot initiatives add amendments to the state constitution, so there's no way for the state court to strike it down once passed.   They can block the measure from getting on the ballot though if it doesn't meet requirements.

In Utah initiatives are just made statutes that the legislature can adjust at will,  I guess officially the state court could strike down a statute passed by ballot measure, but it'd be weird to since they allowed the measure on the ballot in the first place.

I see. I really hope there's a serious effort to get a redistricting commission on the ballot for 2024 and passed. Seems like so much emphasis is just going to an abortion initiative rn, and I worry it may completely overshadow any effort for redistricting commission.

Note that the first hurdle would be a 60% ballot measure in August - if that ballot measure somehow passes, it would probably make this and other future proposed ballot measures more difficult. (As we speak now, there is an active effort to get people to vote down the August ballot measure.)

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I hate both of them. Why do you like making OH GOP gerrymanders so much?

I think it's probably because he thinks the likely end result would be a GOP gerrymander.

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I tried to make a Dem gerrymander in Ohio with 8 Biden seats vs only 7 Trump seats. Albeit OH-02 is only Biden+1 but still.

Indeed, back in 2018, when 538 released its "Atlas of Redistricting," it found that in OH, the most pro-D gerrymander they could come up with at the time was 8D-8R (with three swing seats - two of them R-leaning and one of them D-leaning). This goes to show that political geography mostly favors Republicans in OH, but I still think that a map drawn by a truly independent commission and/or a court-appointed special master would most likely be 8R-7D.