The process to redraw Ohio’s congressional district lines will start later this year.
Currently Republicans hold 10 congressional districts while Democrats hold five. Three of the Democratic seats are in districts that are competitive because of the mix of voters who live in them.
The map approved in 2022 expires in 2026 because it was passed by a state commission that was controlled by Republicans and lacked Democratic support.
Republicans control all three branches of government – the governor’s seat, the Ohio Legislature and the Ohio Supreme Court – and that means they hold nearly all of the levers of power when it comes to redistricting. They also have five of the seven seats on the Ohio Redistricting Commission.
Ohio Democrats do have one potential check on that power: the state’s referendum process. It allows voters to approve or reject new laws in a statewide election.
The nitty-gritty of Ohio’s redistricting rules
Ohio voters in 2018 approved a new system of redistricting, the term for drawing congressional district lines. The rules, which were meant to encourage bipartisan cooperation, spell out three phases of congressional redistricting.
The first two phases will happen in September and October. During that part of the process, Republicans can only pass a new congressional map if they can get at least some Democrats to support it.
If there’s no bipartisan deal by November, Republicans can pass the map of their choosing with a vote in the state legislature because they hold most of the seats.
Passing the map as a bill would mean that it could be repealed by voters. First, though, opponents of the map would need to collect 248,092 voter signatures. An effort like that could cost millions of dollars.
Ohio Democrats tried to repeal a Republican-drawn congressional map in 2011 that they argued was gerrymandered, but the effort fizzled.
What is gerrymandering?
Gerrymandering is the practice of drawing political district boundaries in ways that benefit one party over another.
Are there ways to prevent a referendum?
Republicans have a few options to derail a potential referendum vote that would put their preferred maps at risk.
Including the maps in a spending bill is one option. The state constitution says new laws funding current state operations can’t be repealed by voters. Republicans tried this in 2011 by adding a few million dollars of election funding to their bill redrawing the state’s congressional districts. At the time, the move was challenged and they lost in court. The Ohio Supreme Court now has a different makeup with a strong Republican majority.
The map could also be passed in October during the redistricting process’ second phase. This would involve a panel of elected officials called the Ohio Redistricting Commission. Language in the state constitution suggests a commission-passed map is exempt from referendum. But Democratic votes would be needed to approve the map.
Could there be issues with a referendum?
Ohio has to approve the new congressional map by Nov. 30 to use in the 2026 elections.Timing is an issue for Democrats or others who might want to repeal new maps using the referendum process
Ohio would need to hold 2026 congressional elections in May and November. But the new map would be blocked until November, when voters would have a chance to accept or reject it.
A tussle over that could land in court again,as it did ahead of the 2022 elections when the Ohio Supreme Court ruled maps were unconstitutional because they favored the Republican party.
Voters rejected a new way to draw state districts in 2024
In 2024, voters rejected a statewide constitutional amendment that supporters said would have limited gerrymandering by creating maps that reflected each political party’s share of the statewide vote. If passed, it would have created a multi-step process to draw the political districts for state lawmakers and members of Congress. It would have required redistricting in 2026 and then every 10 years starting in 2031. It would have replaced Ohio’s Redistricting Commission with a citizen’s commission that couldn’t include elected officials, lobbyists, party officials, candidates or their immediate family members.