Ohio redistricting: How would the proposal to ditch politicians for citizens work?

Editor's note: This article has been updated to correct how the measure would calculate Ohioans' statewide partisan preferences. The proposal would use the median of results from recent elections.

Ohioans could vote on a new way of drawing statehouse and congressional districts that replaces politicians with citizens as soon as next year.

The new approach, proposed by a group called Citizens Not Politicians, is a complex, multistep process that details who would draw the new districts and how they could draw them. Former Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice Maureen O'Connor, a Republican who is advocating for the constitutional amendment, says that complexity is a feature, not a bug.

"The specificity is intentional," O'Connor told the USA TODAY Network Ohio Bureau. "That was one of the loopholes in the current constitutional amendments: words that I thought were too easy to give outs."

Redistricting is the process of crafting districts for the politicians who represent Ohioans at the statehouse in Columbus and Congress in Washington, D.C. Gerrymandering occurs when one party draws those districts to disproportionately favor their candidates over the other party's.

In Ohio, courts repeatedly ruled that maps drawn by Republicans unfairly favored GOP candidates − even though voters overwhelmingly approved anti-gerrymandering measures in 2015 and 2018 to prevent that from happening. O'Connor was the sole GOP justice to rule against those maps, joining three Democratic colleagues in several 4-3 decisions.

In her first ruling, O'Connor pitched a mapmaking process that replaced politicians with average Ohioans. The new proposal would create a 15-member Ohio Citizens Redistricting Commission of five Republicans, five Democrats and five independents.

Here's how it would work:

Who would pick the commission?

The proposed constitutional amendment lays out a detailed process for selecting the 15 commission members. A bipartisan screening panel of four retired judges, two Republicans and two Democrats, would handle applications and narrowing down the list.

Members of the Ohio Ballot Board, a panel tasked with approving ballot proposals, would pick those four retired judges. Here's how: Two GOP members on the board would select eight former Republican judges as candidates, then the two Democratic members would select two from that pool. The process would reverse to pick the Democratic judges.

How would they be picked?

The judges' panel would pick a professional search firm to solicit and screen applicants. The panel would publicize the application window, leaving it open long enough to get applicants from across the state.

Then, the panel of former judges would pick a pool of 90 applicants (30 Republicans, 30 Democrats and 30 independents) by majority vote. The 90 applicants' names, hometowns and political parties would be uploaded on a public portal where citizens could weigh in. The applicants' interviews would also be publicly available.

After reviewing those comments and interviews, the panel would select 45 finalists, including 15 from each political party. Within three days of publicizing the finalists, the panel would randomly draw six commissioners, two from each political party, during a public meeting.

Within three weeks, those six commission members would pick the remaining nine commissioners, selecting people who represent different demographics and regions of the state, during a public meeting.

Who could be on the commission?

Commission members would need to be Ohio residents for the six years preceding their endorsement.

Their political parties would be designated based on their voting in two consecutive even-year primaries for the same political party in the preceding six years. For example, someone who pulled a Republican primary ballot in 2022 and 2024 would be considered a Republican "unless relevant factors demonstrate otherwise."

Commissioners would need to disclose political donations for the preceding six years, their history of political involvement and their relationships either professional or personal with people involved in politics. And they could not serve as an elected or appointed state position for six years after the maps are approved.

For their work, commissioners would earn $150 per day, adjusted for inflation.

What would disqualify you from being on the commission?

The proposal would prohibit these individuals from being on the commission:

• Current elected or appointed officials at the federal, state or local level.

• Candidates for elected office in the preceding six years.

• Paid consultants, contractors and officers of a political party, PAC or campaign committee in the preceding six years.

• Staff members, paid consultants or contractors for elected officials or candidates in the preceding six years.

• Registered lobbyists or legislative agents in the preceding six years.

• Immediate relatives of any of the people listed above.

What rules would mapmakers need to follow when drawing districts?

The commission would need to draw maps that "correspond closely to statewide partisan preferences of the voters of Ohio." That's a change from the current system, which only requires mapmakers to try to match those preferences.

That would require calculating the median of the votes won by Republicans and Democrats in statewide races over the preceding six years. For example, Republicans won about 55% of the vote and Democrats won about 45% of the vote in statewide races between 2018 and 2022.

The commission would also have to preserve "communities of interest" when feasible. These communities include people with common "ethnic, racial, social, cultural, geographic, environmental, socioeconomic, or historic identities or concerns." That could mean keeping school districts, townships, municipalities or counties together.

Another change: Mapmakers couldn't consider where current lawmakers live in drawing maps.

Where would prisoners be counted?

In another proposed change, prisoners would be counted at their last known address instead of at the prison. That could dramatically reduce the populations of rural, mostly Republican areas where prisons are typically located while boosting the populations of Democratic larger cities where many inmates are from.

Several states, including Pennsylvania, have made this change in recent years, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

How would the public be involved?

Ohio's current redistricting process was criticized for its lack of transparency and late-night, last-minute votes. The proposed amendment seeks to change that.

Before and after maps are proposed, the commission would need to have five meetings across the state. If they make changes to draft districts, they would need to hold at least two additional public hearings.

After the plan is approved, the commission would need to issue a report explaining the logic behind the districts. All meetings would also be subject to the state's laws on public records and meetings.

How many votes are needed to approve a map?

Maps would be approved by at least nine members of the commission, including at least two Republicans, two Democrats and two independents.

What happens if the commission can't agree on a map?

If the commission doesn't approve a map by the deadline, commissioners would have three days to submit their preferred map. The public would have seven days to weigh in on those options.

Then, each commissioner would rank the maps. If the majority of commissioners pick the same map, it would be the winner.

If not, the maps would be assigned points based on each commissioner's ranking, a process called ranked-choice voting. The least popular maps would be eliminated until one map is ranked first by the majority of commissioners, and that map would be the winner.

How do you challenge a map?

The Ohio Supreme Court would review challenges to the maps.

The court would pick two special masters from a list that the retired judges' panel compiled. The special masters would probe whether the commission followed the redistricting rules and issue a report. The commission or the person who brought the challenge could object to that report.

If the court, based on the report, finds that the commission broke the redistricting rules, the commission would have seven days to fix the map. If the commission doesn't fix the problems, the special masters would have five days to bring the plan into compliance.

The proposal could eliminate the endless back-and-forth that plagued the 2022 redistricting process as the court repeatedly ruled the maps were unconstitutional.

What is the road to the ballot?

The amendment's proponents submitted several thousand signatures and the petition to Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost on Aug. 14. Yost has until Wednesday to say whether the language is a fair and accurate summary of what the amendment would do.

If the measure clears that hurdle, it would face the five-member Ohio Ballot Board, which would determine if it is one issue or more. Once done with that panel, advocates could collect the more than 413,000 valid signatures needed to make the November 2024 ballot.

Jessie Balmert is a reporter for the USA TODAY Network Ohio Bureau, which serves the Columbus Dispatch, Cincinnati Enquirer, Akron Beacon Journal and 18 other affiliated news organizations across Ohio.

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This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Ohio redistricting: Everything you need to know about the new proposal