Ohio redistricting thread

[Mr.Phips]

Here's a completely legal, minimal county split plan with mostly reasonable shapes that has 13 districts at a positive GOP PVI. 



Safe D: Cleveland (D+29, 48% black), Columbus (D+21)

Tossup: Toledo+NW (R+0.02), Akron (orange, R+0.18)

Tilt/Lean R: Youngstown/Canton (light green, R+4.25), western Cleveland suburbs (R+3.43), Cincinnati+eastern counties (blue, R+3.86), NE Ohio (R+3.96)

Likely R: Dayton (purple, R+6.85), north central (light blue, R+7.48)

Safe or Safe-ish: Cincinnati burbs (green, R+9), Columbus northern burbs (periwinkle, R+11), Columbus southern burbs (yellow, R+10.5), west central Ohio (pink,  R+19.5), southeast Ohio (teal, R+12.6)

Only issue is that some GOP incumbents are probably double bunked. 

Hamilton county is unnecessarily split.  A whole district can fit within that county.

[Mr.Phips]

Here's a completely legal, minimal county split plan with mostly reasonable shapes that has 13 districts at a positive GOP PVI. 



Safe D: Cleveland (D+29, 48% black), Columbus (D+21)

Tossup: Toledo+NW (R+0.02), Akron (orange, R+0.18)

Tilt/Lean R: Youngstown/Canton (light green, R+4.25), western Cleveland suburbs (R+3.43), Cincinnati+eastern counties (blue, R+3.86), NE Ohio (R+3.96)

Likely R: Dayton (purple, R+6.85), north central (light blue, R+7.48)

Safe or Safe-ish: Cincinnati burbs (green, R+9), Columbus northern burbs (periwinkle, R+11), Columbus southern burbs (yellow, R+10.5), west central Ohio (pink,  R+19.5), southeast Ohio (teal, R+12.6)

Only issue is that some GOP incumbents are probably double bunked. 

Hamilton county is unnecessarily split.  A whole district can fit within that county.

Its a GOP gerrymander

Don’t the new redistricting rules say that if a district can be fully within a county, it must be drawn within the county?

[Mr.Phips]

The Ohio Senate Democrats Caucus have proposed the following state legislative maps:

Senate


DRA: https://davesredistricting.org/maps#viewmap::6fba93e6-80a9-4ae7-a08c-12d900c400b1

House


DRA: https://davesredistricting.org/maps#viewmap::db79fa50-da2b-4fc6-94bd-272210363e01

Seem like pretty fair maps to me. There are a few cases of favorable decisions being made towards Ds but nothing aggregious. Most of the uglieness comes from the fact that a lot of OH cities have horrendous borders. The biggest question when it comes to the state legistlatures is really a question of not if Democrats have a path to a majority, but how easy it will be for them to crack the GOP's supermajorities (60% is needed). In both these maps, Biden wins slightly above the needed threshold to crack the supermajority.

As a sidenote, it really makes me annoyed how hard it is to do a clean NE OH that follows the rules and keeps COIs together.

Would the new rules prevent Republicans from attaching the city of Dayton to blood red rurals to cheat Dems out of a Dayton based State Senate seat?

[Mr.Phips]

The Republicans drew extremely partisan maps,  they removed any seats they could that would be tossup or lean D, and packed Democrats whenever they could. 

https://twitter.com/WDMelections/status/1436097356819218434

I'd say this should be a very easy court case to make that the maps were drawn to favor a political party.

So are all 33 Biden House seats safe Dem?

[Mr.Phips]

For the state senate what could reasonably be ordered to be changed by O'Connor?

Cincinatti:

Basically everyone agrees the city should be its own district. No issue there.

Butler also gets most of a senate seat so that isn't contraversial by itself but then the next step comes.

Democrats want to place the swingy East Cinci white suburbs with the North black suburbs which creates a Lean D seat rapidly trending D

R's want to do West with North which creates a Likely R seat moderately trending D.

Doing the former forces the West Cinci suburbs to go snake through Butler and go quite far north.

Doing the latter allows a weird looking district but ok in that it connects the rich Eastern suburbs with Warren County. One could also use a bit of deviation and put it with Clermont  and Brown but that might mess up the rest of the map I guess.


Dayton:

Yeah that's pretty bad. There should obviously be a Safe/Likely D seat based on the seat + the western black suburbs that literally touch it.


Toledo:

No issues for either party here.

Columbus:

This one is weird. The GOP seems like it still wants 2 seats from Columbus? Democrats seem to want 4 Safe seats. However the GOP proposal isn't that greedy and seems partially focused on incumbent demand. They still did have 4 Biden seats within Franklin or Union. The third seat is a Clinton seat by 7 points as well but it is Tina Maharath's seat .I think Democrats should have considered voting for the 10 year plan based on these trends rather than letting the GOP redraw the 4 seats to make 1 Safe R seat based in this. It is a bit ugly but can be defended under keeping incumbent home's. The region itself isn't very unfair in the decade average but it definitely is GOP favorable for a 4 year term.

Toledo:

yeah one Dem seat is there.


Lorain:

I mean it is most of a seat but unfortuntaely it has to be attached to a rural county which makes it go from swing to Likely R.

Cuyahoga:

Yeah splitting Cleveland is BS and it should and can be kept exactly whole within 104.8% deviation. The GOP split Cleveland  to its benefit ,by taking 65% D areas near the airport instead of placing 75% D Lakewood into their incumbent's seat


The Akron Cuyahoga seat is weird but both parties have it and I don't fully understand it. One could argue to pair Medina with Cuyahoga and Summit with Kent. but I guess that messes up the Ashland + Wayne + Medina seat.

The last Rep proposal made Maharath’s seat Biden + 18 in order to make Kunze safe.

[Mr.Phips]

For the state senate what could reasonably be ordered to be changed by O'Connor?

Cincinatti:

Basically everyone agrees the city should be its own district. No issue there.

Butler also gets most of a senate seat so that isn't contraversial by itself but then the next step comes.

Democrats want to place the swingy East Cinci white suburbs with the North black suburbs which creates a Lean D seat rapidly trending D

R's want to do West with North which creates a Likely R seat moderately trending D.

Doing the former forces the West Cinci suburbs to go snake through Butler and go quite far north.

Doing the latter allows a weird looking district but ok in that it connects the rich Eastern suburbs with Warren County. One could also use a bit of deviation and put it with Clermont  and Brown but that might mess up the rest of the map I guess.


Dayton:

Yeah that's pretty bad. There should obviously be a Safe/Likely D seat based on the seat + the western black suburbs that literally touch it.


Toledo:

No issues for either party here.

Columbus:

This one is weird. The GOP seems like it still wants 2 seats from Columbus? Democrats seem to want 4 Safe seats. However the GOP proposal isn't that greedy and seems partially focused on incumbent demand. They still did have 4 Biden seats within Franklin or Union. The third seat is a Clinton seat by 7 points as well but it is Tina Maharath's seat .I think Democrats should have considered voting for the 10 year plan based on these trends rather than letting the GOP redraw the 4 seats to make 1 Safe R seat based in this. It is a bit ugly but can be defended under keeping incumbent home's. The region itself isn't very unfair in the decade average but it definitely is GOP favorable for a 4 year term.

Toledo:

yeah one Dem seat is there.


Lorain:

I mean it is most of a seat but unfortuntaely it has to be attached to a rural county which makes it go from swing to Likely R.

Cuyahoga:

Yeah splitting Cleveland is BS and it should and can be kept exactly whole within 104.8% deviation. The GOP split Cleveland  to its benefit ,by taking 65% D areas near the airport instead of placing 75% D Lakewood into their incumbent's seat


The Akron Cuyahoga seat is weird but both parties have it and I don't fully understand it. One could argue to pair Medina with Cuyahoga and Summit with Kent. but I guess that messes up the Ashland + Wayne + Medina seat.

The last Rep proposal made Maharath’s seat Biden + 18 in order to make Kunze safe.

Safe as In Kunze safe or safe as in all decade long?

I think they moved it to a seat the Biden barely won or Trump narrowly won by adding parts of an adjacent county.

[Mr.Phips]

For the state senate what could reasonably be ordered to be changed by O'Connor?

Cincinatti:

Basically everyone agrees the city should be its own district. No issue there.

Butler also gets most of a senate seat so that isn't contraversial by itself but then the next step comes.

Democrats want to place the swingy East Cinci white suburbs with the North black suburbs which creates a Lean D seat rapidly trending D

R's want to do West with North which creates a Likely R seat moderately trending D.

Doing the former forces the West Cinci suburbs to go snake through Butler and go quite far north.

Doing the latter allows a weird looking district but ok in that it connects the rich Eastern suburbs with Warren County. One could also use a bit of deviation and put it with Clermont  and Brown but that might mess up the rest of the map I guess.


Dayton:

Yeah that's pretty bad. There should obviously be a Safe/Likely D seat based on the seat + the western black suburbs that literally touch it.


Toledo:

No issues for either party here.

Columbus:

This one is weird. The GOP seems like it still wants 2 seats from Columbus? Democrats seem to want 4 Safe seats. However the GOP proposal isn't that greedy and seems partially focused on incumbent demand. They still did have 4 Biden seats within Franklin or Union. The third seat is a Clinton seat by 7 points as well but it is Tina Maharath's seat .I think Democrats should have considered voting for the 10 year plan based on these trends rather than letting the GOP redraw the 4 seats to make 1 Safe R seat based in this. It is a bit ugly but can be defended under keeping incumbent home's. The region itself isn't very unfair in the decade average but it definitely is GOP favorable for a 4 year term.

Toledo:

yeah one Dem seat is there.


Lorain:

I mean it is most of a seat but unfortuntaely it has to be attached to a rural county which makes it go from swing to Likely R.

Cuyahoga:

Yeah splitting Cleveland is BS and it should and can be kept exactly whole within 104.8% deviation. The GOP split Cleveland  to its benefit ,by taking 65% D areas near the airport instead of placing 75% D Lakewood into their incumbent's seat


The Akron Cuyahoga seat is weird but both parties have it and I don't fully understand it. One could argue to pair Medina with Cuyahoga and Summit with Kent. but I guess that messes up the Ashland + Wayne + Medina seat.

The last Rep proposal made Maharath’s seat Biden + 18 in order to make Kunze safe.

Safe as In Kunze safe or safe as in all decade long?

I think they moved it to a seat the Biden barely won or Trump narrowly won by adding parts of an adjacent county.

An adjacent county has to be added . Infact 2 exurbs could have been added and they would have had less deviation. Surprised they didn't.  Overall I think Columbus is pretty fair with 4 Biden seats. Its on Ohio Democrats to win them.

Also I probably wouldn't call Maharaths seat safe just because it is Maharath.Maharashtra.

But yeah other than Dayton and the Cleveland split I can't see anything too egregious

A seat Biden won by 18 and Hillary likely won by at least 10 should be close to safe even for Maharath.

[Mr.Phips]

This was the final Ohio Democratic proposal. They gave on the 2nd Cinci seat and gave Trumbull and Mahoning separate districts(Although Congressionally they absolutely should be together it is a bit awkward to work them in at the state senate level)

Still it is pretty disingenuous to complain about the original GOP proposal placing Dayton with a bunch of super rural counties which obviously is extremely absurd ,and then placing downtown Columbus with Pickaway county. Also if the Ohio R proposal violated the VRA, I have no idea how this one didn't. It's incredibly easy and logical to create 2 black majority/plurality districts in Cleveland but the Democratic proposal didn't seem to. They wanted to crack the Eastern suburbs to create 2 Safe Dem districts as Dem voters are really packed in the East because of areas like Shaker heights including both black people and super woke whites. So funnily enough Democrats are actually "packed" in the Cleveland area not due to segregation but actually desegregation !


The second Cincinnati seat is just an unfortunate event for Democrats which is hard to create without creating  a pretty weird district in West Ohio.



Edit: The state house map is even better. So not only did Democrats want to create a Safe D district even with Pickaway county attached for the state senate but they also wanted a likely dem district in the state house by attaching Pickaway county to a bunch of 80% D areas. However it gets even better. Basically every other district in Franklin county would be underpopulated by the maximum 5%  while this district would be overpopulated so it could take in more 80% D minority areas. Basically what the NC GOP did yesterday to the state house leader. Funnily enough the district is closer to a tossup due it being a Trump friendly district demographically, even with all this work done to deny the GOP a single representative in Franklin county.

Would Dems even have a chance at a majority at any time on their own map?

[Mr.Phips]

Just draw a 12-3 map that makes the only Dem seats Cincinnati, Cleveland, and Columbus while making everything else at least Trump + 10.  Dems probably wouldn’t even sue on that one.

[Mr.Phips]

I appreciate the Ohio Supreme Court is Pub friendly, but I cannot image how that court could find that OH-01 as drawn is anything other than a text book case of the lines unduly favoring one party. Its butt ugly erosity has absolutely nothing going for it other than illegal Pubmandering. I am amazed the Pubs were that at once that stupid and arrogant enough to go there. I guess we will find out the hack quotient of the Ohio high court soon enough. I hope they blow that CD out, if only to set a good example for the NYS high court, that will be charged with applying a remarkably similar NYS redistricting law.

The balance of the map I think is quite bullet proof, and I would note that they even eschewed tri-chopping any counties, including Franklin, thus rendering OH-15 rather more marginal than what would be the case otherwise. They also made OH-09 more marginal than it perhaps needed to be. How selfless of them.

As I’ve said before, they easily could have drawn a clean map that confines Dems to three seats (Cincinatti, Cleveland, and Columbus) and the court would be fine with it.

[Mr.Phips]

I don't normally visit this board, but I'm stopping in to say that I was genuinely thrilled by this SC decision. Illinois, North Carolina, Texas, and Wisconsin should go on the chopping block next.

Nope. The GOP favored ones need to be axed. The Dem ones should stay until nationally the districts come out to somewhat even. Or till the GOP approves anti-gerrymandering legislation

The number of Biden districts is likely to be around 230, maybe more. This round of redistricting is likely to result in a more favorable outcome for Democrats than if national redistricting legislation was passed, unless that legislation used some efficiency gap BS. The only major gerrymanders on the GOP side were Texas, which was largely defensive, Ohio, which is now gone, and NC, which has a solid chance of being gone. IL and NY are probably enough to counter all standing GOP gerrymanders on their own.

Democrats have massively won messaging on the issue. They have made gerrymandering into a Republican phenomenon and in doing so have been able to install backwards ideas like the efficiency gap into the decision making of courts and commissions. Yet the GOP will not be so successful advocating for such measures in states where they have wasted votes. If we end up in a system where GOP gerrymanders all get struck down because of superior Dem messaging and litigation, while Dem gerrymanders are allowed to remain, the House should develop a Dem bias. Especially given that Dem strength in the suburbs has minimized geographic bias in the House.

More than 230? That can’t be right lol. So you’re telling me the house will have a DEM bias?!?! That would mean Dems are likely to take the house back in 2024

Not much more, perhaps 232 max or so. And yes, the Democrats have a great chance of flipping back the house in 2024. Although the GOP does better in the congressional race than the presidency. So keep in mind if the Presidential PV is D+2, that might still be an outright R victory in the congressional ballot.

A Presidential PV of just D+2 probably means an EC loss for Dems.

[Mr.Phips]

That map is better...

But why can't the GOP just get over the fact a court will likely not accept anything that has a Hamilton-only district?

Yep.  If they did that and drew the rest of the map as they are doing, the court would likely accept it.  Time to give it up.

[Mr.Phips]

The maximum efficiency Southwest Ohio gerrymander.

Maybe something like this being drawn will get Democrats to put an actual redistricting commission on the ballot that isn’t dependent on the majority party in the legislature/statewide elected offices.

[Mr.Phips]

Will this have any impact wrt redistricting? Think I read that the Ohio House Dems thought that Stephens would make a "genuine effort" for fair maps or something like that. I doubt we're getting the Franklin+Delaware seat or anything like that, but could this give Democrats a genuine seat at the table?

Maybe a deal to just repass the current map, which isn’t terrible for Dems as 2022 showed.  At the very least, they can hope that Stephens would agree to a compact all Hamilton county Cincinatti seat rather than the crap they kept trying to pull last year there.

[Mr.Phips]

Dems should really not push their luck here - maybe be more defensive than offensive and fight only for a cleaner Cincinnati seat and shoring up Kaptur a bit.

Yeah hopefully they are smarter than MO Dems who tried to push for a 3rd seat rather than be happy that they were keeping their two seats.  Or Florida Dems who didn’t provide votes for a veto override on a map that was the same as the one that passed but gave them back FL-05.

[Mr.Phips]

The Pubs have all the cards, so the Dems might be wise to accept the existing map. That way they get winnable Toledo (lean Pub) and Akron (swing) seats, that absent a deal, could be taken away with a nice clean looking map. OH-01 is already pretty safely Dem, and is not coming back.

Why not just put an independent commission on the ballot and remove the legislature from the process entirely?

Yeah that’s the next step if Republicans get too aggressive here.  I know business organizations like the COC basically said they weren’t gonna keep helping Republicans beat back independent commissions here and that is why Republicans came to the table in the first place on this in 2015.

[Mr.Phips]

The Pubs have all the cards, so the Dems might be wise to accept the existing map. That way they get winnable Toledo (lean Pub) and Akron (swing) seats, that absent a deal, could be taken away with a nice clean looking map. OH-01 is already pretty safely Dem, and is not coming back.

Why not just put an independent commission on the ballot and remove the legislature from the process entirely?

Yeah that’s the next step if Republicans get too aggressive here.  I know business organizations like the COC basically said they weren’t gonna keep helping Republicans beat back independent commissions here and that is why Republicans came to the table in the first place on this in 2015.

What's the reason that COC would prefer independent commissions?

Because they would take the issue off the table.  They don’t want to have to be fighting a referendum every two years.

[Mr.Phips]

The Pubs have all the cards, so the Dems might be wise to accept the existing map. That way they get winnable Toledo (lean Pub) and Akron (swing) seats, that absent a deal, could be taken away with a nice clean looking map. OH-01 is already pretty safely Dem, and is not coming back.

Why not just put an independent commission on the ballot and remove the legislature from the process entirely?

Yeah that’s the next step if Republicans get too aggressive here.  I know business organizations like the COC basically said they weren’t gonna keep helping Republicans beat back independent commissions here and that is why Republicans came to the table in the first place on this in 2015.

What's the reason that COC would prefer independent commissions?

Because they would take the issue off the table.  They don’t want to have to be fighting a referendum every two years.

COC spend money to get more R elected.

R drawn maps help to get more R elected.

COC spend money to fight against commission.

I can't see any problem with this logic. With a commission, COC would need to spend even MORE money to elect enough Rs to push for their preferred policy. So what's the problem?

Because they would have to keep spending to fight the commission.  The COC would rather have a 10-5 commission map where they wouldn’t need to spend money on races over a 13-2 partisan map where they would have continually spend money to beat back commission efforts.

[Mr.Phips]

The Pubs have all the cards, so the Dems might be wise to accept the existing map. That way they get winnable Toledo (lean Pub) and Akron (swing) seats, that absent a deal, could be taken away with a nice clean looking map. OH-01 is already pretty safely Dem, and is not coming back.

Why not just put an independent commission on the ballot and remove the legislature from the process entirely?

Yeah that’s the next step if Republicans get too aggressive here.  I know business organizations like the COC basically said they weren’t gonna keep helping Republicans beat back independent commissions here and that is why Republicans came to the table in the first place on this in 2015.

What's the reason that COC would prefer independent commissions?

Because they would take the issue off the table.  They don’t want to have to be fighting a referendum every two years.

COC spend money to get more R elected.

R drawn maps help to get more R elected.

COC spend money to fight against commission.

I can't see any problem with this logic. With a commission, COC would need to spend even MORE money to elect enough Rs to push for their preferred policy. So what's the problem?

Because they would have to keep spending to fight the commission.  The COC would rather have a 10-5 commission map where they wouldn’t need to spend money on races over a 13-2 partisan map where they would have continually spend money to beat back commission efforts.

Seems you did not get my points. Why do COC want to spend money? Because they want to get enough politicians elected to push for their preferred policy.

With a gerrymander map, it would be much easier for them to get enough politicians to push for their preferred policy.

And yet they will have to keep spending money to fight commissions in that case, which they stated they are tired of having to do. 

[Mr.Phips]

DeBased, DeGoat, etc.

Well, I would say that it's in a larger group of commissions that are basically designed to deadlock and go to a tiebreaker 90% of the time, including AZ, MT, NJ, OH, and VA.  I would say VA punting to the state supreme court (which is non-partisan and not directly elected) is obviously better than the other fall back mechanisms, but the other 4 are all about equally bad and likely to end up as coin flip gerrymanders.

Ohio is particularly bad because the tiebreaker doesn't even make any nonpartisan pretenses, it's just whichever psychos happen to have been elected to statewide positions. In AZ and MT the tiebreaker is supposed to be nonpartisan and in NJ at least it's not always one party or the other.

I thought the statewide officeholders only mattered for state legislative redistricting?  Still an incredibly dumb rule that is always going to mean a gerrymander that favors the party holding a majority of Governor, auditor, and SOS.

[Mr.Phips]

You guys realize that the State House Speaker, Jason Stephens, was elected by the entire OH House Democratic Caucus teaming up with ~1/3 of the OH House Republican Caucus to block the other 2/3s of the OH House Republican Caucus from electing the Republican leadership team, right?  A major part of that deal was that Stephens would work extremely closely with Democrats on redistricting.  Democrats could kill Stephens’ speakership at any time by pulling their support if he tries to renege.  There is no appetite among the Republicans who matter in the State House for the sort of maximalist RRH-fantasy 10-2 maps that folks are posting.

Plus, Ohio Republicans in general aren’t in the same sort of “f*** you” mood over redistricting that NC Republicans are or rather, there is still real fear that a non-BS fair redistricting amendment might get passed.  

While neither is the most likely outcome, even a least change map is more likely than a 13-2 at this point.  My guess is we end up with a 10-3-2 map with a competitive-ish seat that is still Republican-leaning enough seat to sink Sykes (and trending R enough that it won’t stay competitive much longer) and a seat that easily flips once Kaptur retires.

Also bare in mind that any map that puts most of Wood County in Kaptur’s district, the city of Troy and/or its southern suburbs in either Turner’s district or the same district as Urbana, puts Zanesville and Marietta in the same district, or puts Rocky River in a non-Safe R seat is a non-starter as it will piss off the various Republican Congressmen.  Bowling Green, Urbana, Dayton, Troy and its southern suburbs, Rocky River, Hillsboro, Marietta, Zanesville, South Russell, and whatever south or west Columbus precinct Mike Carey lives in all need to be in different Safe R districts.  

Technically, the House Speaker + the two Dem appointments only adds to 3/7 and is still beaten by the Senate Speaker appointment + DeWine + Attorney General + LaRose (who will push for maximal gain to help his Senate primary campaign).

The state officeholders (other than governor) only matter for the legislature redistricting I believe.

[Mr.Phips]

So what do we think will happen with Huffman v. Neiman? It was GVR'd in light of Moore v. Harper, but it would seem that that decision only further confirms that OHSC did, in fact, have the authority to strike down Ohio congressional districts as partisan gerrymanders. Will it matter?

Only the extreme interpretation of SLT would have reversed the Ohio S. Ct. ruling, which nobody endorsed. That is because the Ohio Constitution actually has language that proscribes unduly favoring one party, just like NYS. So the ruling is alive and well, albeit toothless apparently.

A new map will probably be drawn, which the now more Pub friendly court will find does not unduly favor one party. Just how hackish that decision will be depends on what the map looks like. If it both does now follow neutral redistricting principles and screws the Dems, and the S. Ct. upholds it, that will be very hackish.

The OHSC can just reverse the ruling on the same ground the North Carolina court did which would reinstate the existing map.

Why don’t Democrats just drop the original suit?

[Mr.Phips]

Now watch the nY high court side with the gop lol

Pretty gross to see red avatars rooting for disgusting gerrymander. You are an opponent of democracy.

The NY map is extremely fair. The initial one was a disgusting gerrymander.

The current NC map is also extremely fair.  If Republicans would just leave that one as is, I’m sure Dems would agree to leave the current NY one as is.

[Mr.Phips]

Unsurprisingly, the body advanced the GOP plan to be the basis for consideration by 4-2. There will be 3 fast-scheduled input meetings over the next week.





These maps are designed to protect the supermajorities for 2024, since that's the only year these plans are likely to matter,  but not exactly go much further than that. Lots of safe seats are not or barely touched. The GOP already has the seats they need, so most stuff they hold is redder when compared to the competitive-mander, as well as most Dem stuff gets bluer. For example SD-16 around Columbus where overperforming Stephanie Kunze is retiring gets fully conceded to the Dems in exchange for shoring up SD-03 that got flipped in 2022. HD-23 in Lake is seemingly they only Dem seat that would become hard to win again, and there are others that numerically replace it.  Doing all this does though require some creativity:

So in the state senate, they are finally giving up on scooping Dayton out of Montgomery county and attaching it to blood red adjacent counties rather than just keeping the remainder of the district within Montgomery county?

[Mr.Phips]

Unsurprisingly, the body advanced the GOP plan to be the basis for consideration by 4-2. There will be 3 fast-scheduled input meetings over the next week.


These maps are designed to protect the supermajorities for 2024, since that's the only year these plans are likely to matter,  but not exactly go much further than that. Lots of safe seats are not or barely touched. The GOP already has the seats they need, so most stuff they hold is redder when compared to the competitive-mander, as well as most Dem stuff gets bluer. For example SD-16 around Columbus where overperforming Stephanie Kunze is retiring gets fully conceded to the Dems in exchange for shoring up SD-03 that got flipped in 2022. HD-23 in Lake is seemingly they only Dem seat that would become hard to win again, and there are others that numerically replace it.  Doing all this does though require some creativity:

So in the state senate, they are finally giving up on scooping Dayton out of Montgomery county and attaching it to blood red adjacent counties rather than just keeping the remainder of the district within Montgomery county?

Even with the Courts now aligned in their favor, the commission is still bound by the 'sensibility' rules that come with the body. Counties larger than a state senate seat have to nest a district, and it needs to include all or a significant part of the largest municipality. This is probably the best they could do - separating the city from the western suburbs -when you take into account how senate seats have to nest 3 state house seats, and there has to be an AA access district that comprises Dayton.

If this is the case then how were they able to get away with taking OH-01 out of Hamilton county?