There seems to be some confusion about State Issue 1 on Ohio’s ballot in November. Let me see if I can clear some things up.
A prior ballot initiative changed Ohio’s method of drawing legislative districts. The thought was that a bipartisan board of elected officials would draw district boundaries in a fair and impartial fashion. At least, that was the plan for improvement.
As it turned out, the elected officials acted like political operatives instead of dedicated neutral public servants (no surprise). The result was district boundaries as mangled and contorted as before. The Ohio Supreme Court threw out the results as unconstitutional multiple times. The elected officials kept coming back with plans that did not fix the problems. After litigation, Ohio was stuck with districts constructed by one party for one party. You can read the opinions of the Ohio Supreme Court on its website: https://www.supremecourt.ohio.gov.
The proposed improvement failed.
Fast forward, here we are in 2024 with a new plan in the form of State Issue 1. This proposal takes elected officials out of the district drawing process and turns it over to a panel of regular citizens. Voting FOR Issue 1 would go a long way toward getting gerrymandering out of Ohio’s district drawing process.
“The Moderates’ Manifesto” references voting, voter suppression, and gerrymandering in Points 6 and 13 in the Manifesto (see Chapters 2 and 7.) If we are to avoid the hyper-partisan nature of current politics and avoid the election of extremists to state government and to Congress, we need to get our voting process in order so citizens select their elected representatives and not the other way around.