Former chief justice: Redistricting was ‘doomed to fail.’ Ohio needs new way to draw maps

The Republican former chief justice of the Ohio Supreme Court has done as she said she would earlier this year: She’s working with a group that wants to change the way Ohio’s legislative and congressional district maps are drawn. She and the court’s three Democrats ruled against them every time they came before the court last year.

Only a handful of states have banned gerrymandering, or the process of drawing districts for elected officials to favor one party over another. Ohio is one of them, passing constitutional amendments in 2015 and 2018. But one key voice in the process says it didn’t work.

“In retrospect, looking at those constitutional amendments, realizing who populated the commission, it was doomed to fail,” said former Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor.

Statehouse News Bureau