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PRESERVING GEOGRAPHIC BOUNDARIES

Although most people imagine that political districts are drawn to group together people who live near each other and share common interests as residents of the same city, township, or county, district mappers routinely divide organic communities into two or more political districts.

n Twenty of Ohio’s counties are divided into two or more congressional districts.

n Thirteen of Ohio’s counties are divided into two or more state senate districts.

n Twenty-five of Ohio’s counties are divided into two or more state house districts.

While some local division is necessary when a county has more voters than can be apportioned into a single district, the details of Ohio’s divisions suggests that geographic communities are broken up for political reasons.

Political parties who want to exploit the redistricting process to maximize their power have a variety of techniques at their disposal to do so. In the 2001 redistricting, Ohio Republicans used three techniques to maximize their political power: packing, cracking, and cherry-picking.

With packing, the party in power packs as many voters of the opposing party into as small a number of districts as possible. While this creates safe districts for the opposition party, it dilutes that party’s strength throughout the surrounding area, allowing the party in power to pick up additional seats it otherwise might not. Packing is often used in metropolitan areas with enough population for multiple districts, typically stuffing urban voters into separate districts from suburban voters.

Cracking is the redistricting version of divide and conquer. With cracking, the party in power splits the voters of the opposing party into two or more districts, diluting their voting power by spreading them throughout multiple districts.

Each of Ohio’s thirty-three Senate districts contains exactly three of Ohio’s ninety-nine House districts. By cherry-picking voters into three contiguous House districts that can then comprise a Senate district, the party with the power of the redistricting pen can minimize the representation in the Senate of the voters of the party out of power.

The effects of these gerrymandering techniques in Ohio are particularly pronounced in certain areas of the state, often urban areas with sufficient populations to slice and dice to suit the partisan designs of the party in charge of drawing the districts. Following is a look at how gerrymandering works in five Ohio counties.

Cuyahoga County
Cuyahoga’s urban center, Cleveland, is comprised largely of Democratic voters, while the suburbs are more evenly split. The 2001 plan packed Democrats into nine safe urban House districts while creating two safe Republican suburban House districts (16 and 18) and two House districts which lean Republican (17 and 98). Republicans cherry-picked voters in House Districts 16, 17, and 18 to create a safe Republican Senate district, District 24, which wraps around the city of Cleveland much the way the district of Elbridge Gerry, gerrymandering’s namesake, wrapped around 19th century suburban Boston.

Franklin County
While Franklin County voters overwhelmingly voted for the Democratic presidential candidate in 2004, the Congressional, Senate, and House districts drawn in 2001 resulted in a Republican advantage of 3-0, 2-1, and 6-3 respectively in the Franklin county delegation those political bodies. At the House level, Democrats were packed into two safe Democrat districts and one leaning Democrat district. Those three districts were then packed into one safe Democrat Senate district, giving Franklin County Republicans two Senate seats. At the congressional level, the strongly Democratic county was cracked into three separate districts, none of which elected a Democrat, all of which stretched into at least two other counties.

Hamilton County
The total number of Democrat votes in Hamilton County’s 2004 Ohio House races outnumbered the total number of Republican votes, yet Republicans won five of the county’s eight House seats. Democrats were packed into three House districts, one of which was extended along the Ohio River in a band about as wide as a boardwalk. As with Franklin County, those three Democrat House seats were packed into one safe Democrat Senate seat.

Montgomery County
As with Hamilton County, the total number of Democrat votes in Montgomery County’s 2004 Ohio House races outnumbered the total number of Republican votes, yet the district-drawing Republicans won three of the county’s five seats. Democrats were packed into two safe Democrat House districts, which were in turn packed into a safe Democrat Senate seat.

Interestingly, the 1991 plan included almost all of Montgomery County in the 3rd Congressional District, which voted Democrat in all five elections held under the 1991 plan. Republicans cracked the county’s Democrat voters in the 2001 plan, resulting in two congressional districts, neither one of which fit entirely within Montgomery County, as the 3rd District had. While Montgomery County voted for the Democratic presidential candidate over the Republican candidate in 2000 and 2004, the 2001 districts resulted in a Republican advantage of 2-0 in congressional representation.

Summit County
Summit County leans Democratic, as evidenced by Democratic candidates receiving more votes than Republican candidates at the Presidential, Congressional, Senate, and House level in 2004. The 2001 Republican-drawn plan packed Democrats into two safe Democratic state House districts, while creating two safe Republican districts and one district which leans Republican. In 2002, this plan resulted in three Republican House seats and two Democratic House seats.

The plan backfired when the Republican representing the 41st House District, Bryan Williams, chose not to run for re-election in 2004. Despite the fact that the voters of the 41st district chose Bush over Kerry, those voters chose the Democratic candidate for the Ohio House – Brian Williams.