Ohio's fall redistricting issue sparked a fight over one word. So what is 'gerrymandering,' anyway?

COLUMBUS, Ohio — All the political wrangling over Ohio's Issue 1, a statewide ballot issue aimed at changing the way the state draws its political maps, has landed voters in a fix. While they are hearing from the campaign behind the constitutional amendment that it would prevent gerrymandering, the language they'll see on ballots says gerrymandering would be required.

It's a war over one word — “gerrymander” — and rarely have so many dictionaries been called into action during an Ohio ballot campaign.

While there are certain neutral words to describe political mapmaking — “redistricting” or “reapportionment,” for example — the word “gerrymander” is the one typically employed to suggest that string-pulling aimed at securing an unfair political advantage is afoot.

How the Republican-controlled Ohio Ballot Board turned the tables on Citizens Not Politicians, a bipartisan and well-funded campaign pushing to replace Ohio's troubled redistricting system with an independent commission, on use of the word requires some unpacking.

Here's a look at what happened:

What is the history behind Issue 1?

Issue 1 emerged after courts declared seven different versions of the congressional and legislative maps Ohio created to reflect population changes from the 2020 Census unconstitutionally gerrymandered to favor Republicans.

The existing Ohio Redistricting Commission that created those maps includes three statewide elected officials and four state lawmakers — a mix that currently gives Republicans a 5-2 majority.

Ohioans voted overwhelmingly in 2015 to create the commission and have it draw Statehouse districts. During that bipartisan campaign, called Fair Districts for Ohio, they were promised the new system would "protect against gerrymandering.” In 2018, voters gave the commission an additional role in a new system set up to draw congressional districts.

Citizens Not Politicians argues the existing system has failed. The group is calling for replacing the current regime with an independent body made up of average citizens. Current and former politicians, party officials and lobbyists would be ineligible. The 15-member Ohio Citizens Redistricting Commission would include Republicans, Democrats and independents and represent a mix of the state’s geographic and demographic traits.

What does the yes campaign say about gerrymandering?

From the outset, Citizens Not Politicians has said its mission is to “end gerrymandering.”

“There is so much energy from Ohioans across the political spectrum to end gerrymandering," it declared during the signature-gathering process. "We are mobilizing in every corner of the state to put citizens – not politicians – in charge of drawing Ohio’s legislative maps in an open and transparent process.”

Here, the definition of “gerrymander” from Webster's Third New International Dictionary would be operative: “to divide into political units in an unnatural and unfair way with the purpose of giving special advantages to one group.”

The campaign points to recent election results to make its case.

With litigation over maps tied to the 2020 Census unresolved, 2022 elections went forward under the unconstitutional maps. Republicans won even larger supermajorities at the Statehouse in those elections, capturing about 66% of the Ohio House and congressional seats and nearly 79% of Ohio Senate seats. Ohio's political breakdown over the period was about 54% Republican, 46% Democratic.

Mapmaking rules outlined in the amendment include: "To ban partisan gerrymandering and prohibit the use of redistricting plans that favor one political party and disfavor others.”

What happened at the ballot board?

Citizens Not Politicians submitted its own version of proposed language for describing Issue 1 to voters at the ballot box, as is typical. The summary made no mention of gerrymandering. It was 220 words long, which, their attorney, Don McTigue, said was modeled after language for the redistricting measures of 2015 and 2018.

The 5-member panel's Republican majority took umbrage at the summary's brevity, given that the proposed amendment is 26 pages long.

Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose, who chairs the board, presented a three-page, single-spaced summary of his own. It said Issue 1 would “repeal constitutional protections against gerrymandering" approved by large margins in 2015 and 2018, and “eliminate the longstanding ability of citizens to hold their representatives accountable" for establishing fair districts.

McTigue objected to what he called loaded phrasing that said the new citizen-led commission would be “required to manipulate the boundaries of state legislative and congressional districts to favor the two largest political parties in the state of Ohio."

But the board doubled down. Republican state Sen. Theresa Gavarone offered an amendment changing the word from “manipulate” — defined as “to control or influence (a person or situation) cleverly, unfairly, or unscrupulously" — to “gerrymander.” To gasps from the audience, the amendment passed.

LaRose read the Compact Oxford English Dictionary definition of “gerrymander” that he said inspired his office's original phrasing — “to manipulate the boundaries of (an electoral constituency) so as to favour one party or class.” He noted the word originated with Massachusetts Gov. Eldridge Gerry — pronounced with a hard “g” — in 1812, in reaction to the redrawing of the state's Senate districts.

Gavarone argued that “gerrymander" was a fair and accurate word to use, because Issue 1 requires adherence to voters' “partisan preferences."

Citizens Not Politicians sued, arguing that the board had passed what “may be the most biased, inaccurate, deceptive, and unconstitutional” ballot language in state history.

What did the Ohio Supreme Court say?

In an opinion earlier this month, the high court required the ballot board to make two small changes to its approved language — but it let stand the passage that will describe Issue 1 as requiring gerrymandering.

The court's Republican majority agreed with the ballot board's position that saying the new Ohio Citizens Redistricting Commission would be “required to gerrymander” is accurate — because “gerrymander” in itself is a somewhat neutral word.

“What these rules require falls within the meaning of ‘gerrymander.’ They mandate the new commission draw district boundaries that give a political advantage to an identifiable group — Republicans in some districts and Democrats in others,” the opinion said.

Citing six different definitions of the word from five different dictionaries, each with slightly varied language, the opinion said, “Taking all the definitions into consideration, an all-purpose definition of ‘gerrymander’ is to draw district boundaries to give a political advantage to an identifiable group at the expense of neutral criteria such as geographic compactness, political subdivisions, or communities of interest.”

Justices noted that courts have paired the word with others to change its meaning, such as “partisan gerrymandering,” “racial gerrymandering” or “reverse gerrymandering.” The phrase “bipartisan gerrymandering” is “most pertinent here,” they wrote.