Thursday, April 27, 2000

Most people approve of democracy. What they dislike is the $#@*&%! politics.

Which is why many voters may be receptive to a proposal by the Ohio League of Women Voters that would change the way the state draws boundaries for congressional and state legislative districts, beginning next year.

At present, redrawing of the state's political map is a once-a-decade partisan wrestling match in which each party hopes to redraw legislative boundaries to maximize the chances of winning the new districts. Often as not, this process ends up in court.

Next year, the Ohio Republican Party will control the redrawing of districts for the state Senate and House because the GOP controls the five-member Apportionment Board, which is made up of the governor, state auditor, secretary of state and one representative each from the Republican and the Democratic parties.

The GOP also redrew the map in 1991. But before that, Democrats controlled the Apportionment Board and redesigned the districts in 1981 and 1971.

If the GOP maintains its majorities in the state House and Senate after the November election, Republicans also will have substantial control over the realignment of congressional district boundaries, because these are drawn by the General Assembly.

The League of Women Voters would like to take the politics out of drawing political boundaries with an amendment to the Ohio Constitution that would do away with the Apportionment Board and take congressional redistricting away from the legislature.

In its place, the board proposes a system that allows anyone to submit a district boundary plan to the Ohio Secretary of State.

The secretary would evaluate each proposal and choose the one that best fulfills three objective conditions: that each district have nearly the same population, that they be geographically compact and that they split the fewest number possible of counties and municipalities.

The League believes this formula will end current practice, in which politicians attempt to draw districts that maximize their party's chance of winning a majority of seats.

The Ohio Republican Party, sitting in the reapportionment catbird seat, has no particular incentive to seek a change.

But Ohio GOP spokesman Gary Abernathy says the party is not opposed to a change in the reapportionment method after the next census 10 years from now, and is willing to work with the League to make that happen.

Absent any evidence of something significantly wrong with the current system, he said, there is no reason to radically alter the method before reapportionment and redistricting next year. He also points out that the existing system seems to work, and each party has benefited from it in the past 30 years.

When voters cast ballots for governor, secretary of state and state auditor, they also are casting ballots to choose who will draw the boundaries of state legislative districts. Some would say these voters get exactly what they ask for.

Of course, this assumes that voters are informed enough about their government to know that a vote in these three statewide offices also is a vote on who controls reapportionment.

David J. Leland, chairman of the Ohio Democratic Party, said he doesn't believe most voters are thinking of the Apportionment Board when they cast ballots.

While the Ohio Democratic Party has not taken a position on the League proposal, Leland said he personally favors the idea, and not simply because it would deprive the GOP of its lock on the next reapportionment.

He said the current system has outlived its time. Today, voters are less tolerant of party attempts to tilt the playing field by gerrymandering districts.

In the past 30 years, both parties have had their chance to work the system to their advantage, but now is the time to make the system work to the advantage of voters, Leland says.

Of course, the GOP can quite rightly reply that the Democrats have had two times at bat on reapportionment, while the GOP has had only one.

The League proposal does hit one wrong note, and that is a provision that would allow the General Assembly to override the compactness requirements in order to mandate minimum or maximum percentages of minority voters in a specified number of districts.

This appears to be an opening to the very kind of manipulation of boundary drawing that the League says it wants to eliminate.

This also is an invitation to lengthy and costly lawsuits that already plague reapportionment and redistricting.

The League hopes to get its proposal on the November ballot by collecting 335,000 valid voter signatures by the first week of August.

League officials say they've been circulating petitions for months, but don't know how many signatures they've collected.

A joint resolution in the Ohio House would put a very similar measure on the November ballot, but only if three-fifths of both chambers of the legislature approve such a move.

The joint resolution, however, would put off the start of the new reapportionment plan for a decade.

The idea may be to take the politics out of reapportionment, but it will take a lot of politicking to get there.