Ohio is at a critical moment in redistricting. With a deadline just days away on October 31, 2025, the Ohio Redistricting Commission must decide whether to honor voters' demands for fair maps—or allow the process to default to partisan control.

Ohio voters overwhelmingly approved state legislative redistricting reform in 2015, and congressional redistricting reform in 2018. Both reforms won with well over 70% of the vote and passed in all 88 Ohio counties. In 2021, the first maps were drawn using the new rules, which were intended to focus on a transparent and bipartisan map-making process and rules to keep communities together. However, map approval was not bipartisan and even found to be unconstitutional. The Ohio Supreme Court allowed the GOP-passed map to be used for the 2022 midterms despite finding it to be unconstitutionally gerrymandered. The same year, a panel of federal judges ordered Republican-passed redistricting plans for state legislative districts to be used, calling their decision "the best of our bad options."

Timeline

September 30, 2025: Deadline for Ohio General Assembly to pass map

It starts in the Ohio General Assembly: The Ohio House and the Ohio Senate must pass a 6-year map with a 60% majority of all members of both chambers and 50% of all Republicans and all Democrats (by September 30).  

October 31, 2025: Deadline for Ohio Redistricting Commission to pass map

The Ohio Redistricting Commission steps in: The Commission— again 5 Republicans and 2 Democrats— must agree to the new maps by a 4/7 vote, including 2 members of the Republican Party and 2 members of the Democratic Party (by October 31). We are currently in this phase of the process, with the deadline only a few days away.

November 30, 2025: Deadline for Ohio General Assembly to pass map

The maps go back to the Ohio General Assembly: The legislature is again required to pass maps the 60% supermajority and with 50% of members from both parties. If the maps pass only with a simple majority, the districts have additional constitutional requirements and must be replaced after 6 years (by November 30).

After Oct. 31, the Ohio Constitution allows Republican lawmakers to pass a new map in November with a simple majority and without any Democratic votes. Democrats claim that has been the goal all along. Republicans are expected to push through a map that helps them pick up two or three congressional seats next year beyond the 10 districts they currently hold. Ohio’s congressional delegation is currently split 10 Rs and 5 Ds, while Ohioans vote around 54% Republican.

Why This Matters

Ohio voters have been crystal clear about what they want:

  • 2015: 71% voted YES for state legislative redistricting reform—passed in all 88 counties
  • 2018: 75% voted YES for congressional redistricting reform—passed in all 88 counties

Both reforms aimed to create transparent, bipartisan maps that keep communities together. But despite these overwhelming mandates, the maps drawn in 2021 were ruled unconstitutionally gerrymandered by the Ohio Supreme Court—yet were still used in the 2022 elections.

  • 2024: In 2023 and 2024, thousands of volunteers worked tirelessly to gather more than 730,000 signatures to get the Citizens Not Politicians citizen initiative onto the ballot, which gave Ohio voters the chance to pass a constitutional amendment that would give citizens the power. The Citizens Not Politicians amendment, aka Issue 1, was an independent redistricting commission designed to put people first, not politicians' self-interest.

    But some of the same Ohio politicians who benefitted the most from gerrymandering controlled too many levers of power and manipulated the ballot language so severely that Ohioans believed voting against the amendment was a vote in favor of fair maps. The issue was defeated at the ballot.