ANALYSIS: Ohio Democrats show when a bad map is a good deal
Today, Democrats on the Ohio Redistricting Commission agreed to a new congressional map that seems likely to end the political career of longtime Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-OH) and makes Rep. Greg Landsman’s (D-OH) seat much harder to defend. So people like former state Democratic Party head David Pepper and a coalition of liberal advocacy groups are saying that it’s a lousy deal.
But if you take a close look at the political trends and redistricting process in Ohio, you’d see that the map was a reasonable bet to prevent a total washout in the state’s congressional delegation, and the votes for it were justified. And notably, nothing in the deal precludes Ohioans from trying to implement a fairer process ahead of the 2028 elections.
Ohio has the most convoluted redistricting process of any state. The state constitution requires Ohio politicians to redraw the map they passed ahead of the 2022 elections before the 2026 elections because those maps did not have bipartisan support. The constitution also requires that districts not be drawn for partisan gain, but a nakedly partisan Republican state supreme court has gutted those requirements.
The first body that gets a crack at redrawing districts is a commission with five Republican members and two Democratic members. If a majority of the commission can agree to a map with votes from members of each party before Oct. 31 it gets put in place for the rest of the decade. If not, then the legislature has until Nov. 30 to pass a map by a majority vote. That map would be subject to a veto referendum (similar to the ongoing effort in Missouri) unless it was passed with a supermajority.
https://heartlandsignal.com/2025/10/31/analysis-ohio-democrats-show-when-a-bad-map-is-a-good-deal/