Ohio redistricting proposal poised for failure

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http://www.middletownjournal.com/news/news/state-regional/redistricting-petitions-are-short-130000-signature/nPx3M/

Petitioners seeking a constitutional amendment on congressional and state redistricting reform are short on the number of signatures required to put the issue on the November ballot, the Ohio Secretary of State’s office announced Wednesday.

Voters First submitted 466,352 signatures to the office July 3 and 254,625 — about 55 percent — were certified as belonging to registered Ohio voters. Enough signatures were collected in 34 of Ohio’s 88 counties to meet the required 5 percent of the total vote cast for governor in the 2010 election, 10 counties short.

The group has 10 days to submit more than 130,000 valid signatures and meet the county threshold. In three of the state’s largest counties — Cuyahoga, Hamilton and Lucas — more signatures were deemed invalid than valid.




Well, you can put a fork in this one.

[krazen1211]

Muon2 and I, I think, have decided that "independent" commissions need a lot of constraints to work well. Otherwise, the commissions tend to be gamed, and those claiming to be "independent" tend to fall considerably short of that. Those without reasonably tight parameters have tended to go off the rails. I don't think either of us have been particularly impressed.

Even the best gamed independent commissions (say Arizona) will come up with results similar to the better kind of legislative-map-by-one-party-with-serious-constraints (the new Florida map, say) - and clearly better than the worse examples of that (say Michigan).

The Michigan map has a mere 2 out of 14 districts won by Senator John McCain, compared to 12 out of 14 districts won by President Barack Obama.

If anything, the Michigan map well adheres to the notion that competitive seats should be drawn. Greenforest32 is complaining for no reason at all, other than the simple fact that the voters do not prefer his party.

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That sounds like the arguments NC Republicans made about their map. They maintained that because Roy Cooper carried all the districts in 2008, their redistricting plan was, holistically, "fair" and "competitive."

That's true, except for the fact that when many people label a state as 'lean D' or 'lean R', and label a mapping scheme as representative of the state or not, they tend to do so based on the Presidential race rather than an obscure downballot race.


I reject the notion that a district like, say, MI-01, in the old map and the new, can be considered 'gerrymandered' merely because a Republican wins it after a Democrat held it for years.

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Republicans knew what they were doing with the ballot wording for the Ohio redistricting referendum. Last month we found voters in the state supported an independent redistricting commission by a 37/24 margin. But with the official ballot language, which frames the commission as 'removing the authority of elected representatives' and giving it to appointed officials, only 33% of voters now say they support the amendment to 38% who are opposed.




Great news!

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Republicans knew what they were doing with the ballot wording for the Ohio redistricting referendum. Last month we found voters in the state supported an independent redistricting commission by a 37/24 margin. But with the official ballot language, which frames the commission as 'removing the authority of elected representatives' and giving it to appointed officials, only 33% of voters now say they support the amendment to 38% who are opposed.




Great news!

Yes, the language was literally the worst imaginable in terms of partisanship and slanting the ballot language against the facts. Rammed through by the gop sec of state machinery.
'Great news'? But Krazy, I thought you were against ALL "vicious gerrymanders"? SURELY you're not just being a shamelessly partisan hack without scruples.

Vicious gerrymandering is an American ideal. What is there to be against?


The Republicans in, say, Texas, have to seek retribution for a century of such vicious gerrymandering.