Redistricting plan opposed

FINDLAY — Hancock County Republicans were urged Friday to vote against a legislative redistricting proposal expected to appear on the November general election ballot. It would make the process by which Ohio's legislative districts are periodically redrawn so complex it could collapse — which might be the goal of its proponents, said Frank Strigari, former chief legal counsel for the Ohio Senate. The group gathering signatures on petitions to put the redistricting proposal before Ohio voters is called Citizens Not Politicians. Among its proponents is retired Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice Maureen O'Connor, Strigari said. O'Connor in 2022 was the deciding vote in a ruling that struck down a heavily pro-Republican gerrymandered redistricting map. Strigari on Friday questioned how true a Republican O'Connor is. After the high court struck down the Republican-favored map, the Ohio Apportionment Board, which is comprised of five Republicans and two Democrats, approved a different map of legislative districts. Strigari said Citizens Not Politicians wants to set up a system that guarantees Democrats win more legislative seats in the future. "Understand when people say 'We want fair districts,' in this campaign what they're saying is, 'We want to take districts away from Republicans so we can give more to the Democrats,'" Strigari said. "Why don't we just have an election to see who actually can win under districts that a unanimous group of Republicans and Democrats just put together in the last year?" He said the Citizens Not Politicians proposal is mostly about how to pick the people who would decide how to redraw legislative districts. "It's taking your elected representatives that everyone elects out of the state out of the picture and putting in people that literally at one point in the process they are pulling out of a hat to saying 'This person is going to help us draw a (redistricting) map for the state of Ohio,'" Strigari said. It will make redistricting "extraordinarily more complex," he said. "It will not work because the system will be bogged down in process and it's going to fail immediately. It's just going to fail because the process is going to break down at some point," he said. "Some people will say that's the ultimate objective because they then want to just let the courts to draw (the map of district boundaries). "They built in this process to where the courts can ultimately draw the maps," Strigari said. "I would strongly urge you not to support it."