Sad, sober reality: Allison Russo on why Democrats had no option but to support bogus maps

Rep. Allison Russo, D-Upper Arlington, is the minority leader of the Ohio House. She is a member of the Ohio Redistricting Commission.

Tuesday’s late-night Ohio Redistricting Commission vote in an empty Statehouse, surrounded by reporters, staffers, and only a few citizens, was maybe the hardest vote I’ve had to make as an elected official.

After more than two years of multiple rounds of court-ordered map redraws, I have been in the trenches of fighting back against a Republican-controlled Redistricting Commission that repeatedly passes unconstitutional, unfair, and unproportional maps.

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But, at the end of this sixth round of another exhausting and willful disregard by Republican commissioners of the rule of law and the will of voters, I faced a sad and sober reality.

The sober reality of rigged redistricting process in Ohio.

A “no” vote would conclude with a two-year map more gerrymandered than the current unconstitutional 2022 maps, get a rubber stamp of approval by a new Ohio Supreme Court, and again subject Ohioans to even worse maps redrawn by this commission in 2025.

A “yes” vote would include a few marginal improvements to a clearly gerrymandered map, remove the drawing pen from this commission for eight years, and give the time and space for Ohio citizens to take this process permanently out of the hands of politicians. Faced with two imperfect decisions, I voted “yes”.

How I came to that conclusion was not easy, but I know it was the right one.

Ohioans deserve to know the game was rigged before it even started.

We are 16-months late in responding to the last court order, yet the Republican-controlled commission waited until the last minute to bring us together following the announcement by Secretary of State Frank LaRose of a hurried timeline solely introduced to create a false sense of urgency to do something Republicans intended to do all along — pass gerrymandered maps with hardly any public input, all in order to expand their power grab on Ohio.

Ohio voters were treated like political pawns

When the commission did finally come together, it was marred by backroom political maneuvering, partisan tactics, and more than its fair share of controversy.

We are so far beyond where the Ohio Constitution and reforms passed overwhelmingly by voters ever contemplated. During the latest round, Republicans were literally making up the rules as they marched forward without fear of correction by an imbalanced Ohio Supreme Court.

The current redistricting process is beyond broken - every meeting was deeply political, every decision a political one, and every district treated as a political pawn.

You can’t un-gerrymander gerrymandered maps when those in control are unwilling to relinquish their unearned power.

When Democratic commissioners were given a small amount of negotiating power to improve a handful of districts in the Republicans’ latest gerrymandered maps, you bet we seized the opportunity.

A 'yes' vote was the only viable option

Continuing to lose Democratic seats in a rigged Republican supermajority has real consequences for communities we represent and Ohio voters, and the certainty of losing more ground in the next election without the small map corrections we negotiated is irresponsible.

Two years can be an eternity in the Ohio General Assembly, and the risk of even worse maps drawn by this commission in another two years is too great to ignore. Under the 2022 unconstitutional maps, Ohio House Democrats went from 35 to 32 seats. That loss of three seats was the exact vote margin needed for Senate Joint Resolution 2, which became Issue 1 in the August special election, to fail and never come before voters.

Voting “no” for maps on principle alone in the high-stakes reality of the fight for democracy happening in our state legislature is simply not an option.

My “yes” vote was not an endorsement of the final maps, which are still clearly gerrymandered, but a declaration of my commitment to stop the madness of a flawed process and find another way to fight for fair districts.

You may disagree with my vote and my reasoning, but do not mistakenly think I am deterred from our shared goal of giving Ohioans the government they deserve.  If you are angry about how this redistricting saga ended – good. Take that anger and turn it into action that ensures politicians are never again charged with drawing their own district lines.

Ohioans deserve an independent and citizen-focused redistricting process.

Over the last two years, I have often reminded my legislative colleagues that these districts do not belong to us. They belong to the voters.

As we all learned in August and will likely learn again in November, the right of Ohioans to have the final say when their government becomes non-responsive or corrupt is very powerful.

It’s time to use that citizen power again to permanently remove politicians from the redistricting process.

Rep. Allison Russo, D-Upper Arlington, is the minority leader of the Ohio House.

This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Why Ohio Democrats vote with Republicans on redistricting maps. Allison Russo explains