Put an end to  gerrymandering with

Congressional Ohio Redistricting Equality!

Here is the CORE (Congressional Ohio Redistricting Equality) plan to end gerrymandering forever in Ohio.

Gerrymandering lets the majority party (at the time of census reallocation of Ohio’s Congressional seats) rig future elections by stacking areas where the other party is in a majority into a few odd-shaped districts.

Such as the snake-shaped one that runs through parts of FOURTEEN counties in Ohio. This legal cheating allows one political party to get 75% of Ohio’s Congressional seats with only 50% of the votes cast in the state by stacking the deck for more districts for its political party.

It’s a middle-finger and slap in the face to the idea that a vote in one part of Ohio has the same weight as a vote far on the other side of Ohio.

Gerrymandering makes election outcomes pre-ordained because the political party that drew the lines makes sure that its party’s voters outnumber the other party’s voters in as many districts as possible.

By giving the other party a few districts, with squibbling lines and in-your-face district boundaries, the controlling party all but guarantees it will have have a majority of Ohio’s Congressional seats.

This is WRONG, no matter which party does it.

It is time that Ohio’s congressional districting becomes a template for the other 49 states.

My proposal can be achieved by the Legislature (not likely since the people sitting there benefit immensely from the gerrymandering) or by an Amendment to the Ohio Constitution.

My proposed Ohio Constitutional Amendment is direct and simple and makes gerrymandering extremely difficult, even for evil, devious political hacks:

EVERY resident in EVERY county must be in the same Congressional district

 

EVERY Congressional district must have ONLY contiguous counties

 

No multiple-counties district population can be less than 80%

of the highest multiple-countries district population

 

This prevents running slivers through county after county to stack the deck for the party doing the redistricting.

Requiring that EVERY county in each Congressional district must be contiguous means that EVERY county in that district must share a boundary with another county in that district.

Not allowing any district with more than one county to have less than 80% of most populated multiple-county district again avoids the snake and duck-shaped districts currently besmirching Ohio.

It can be done if you are not trying to skirt making each vote count the same in every district. In the redistricting map that I came up with IN TWO DAYS using only the skills that Monongah High (West Virginia) math teacher the late Mary Turkovich instilled in me and investigative techniques honed during 43 years as a newspaper editor, the smallest multiple-counties district’s population is within 92% of the most heavily populated multiple-counties population.

So it can done as long as you’re not trying to hoodwink the one-person, one-vote of equal weight status that is fair in a democracy.

Even the connivers and cheaters will have a much tougher time defrauding Ohio’s voters with this proposed amendment.

I have color-coded a map of Ohio counties to show the 14 Congressional districts’ boundaries under my plan. I know that Ohio currently has 15 Congressional districts but the state is expected to lose one Congressional seat after the 2020 U.S. Census is finalized. If Ohio manages to keep its 15^th Congressional district then it should be simple to redraw my plan under my proposed rules to form 15 districts.

If an 87-year-old can do it in two days, then surely experts who aren’t trying to sidestep our democracy can do it, too. Or, for $1 and travel, lodging and food costs, I’ll be glad to be their consultant and do it for them.

I plan to submit my work to the Ohio League of Women Voters, the Ohio chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union and influential newspapers around Ohio.

Hopefully this will become a groundswell that will put gerrymandering to death forever. Fair play is important in politics, too.

You can be sure that the loudest screams will come from those who are the most egregious violators of honest elections.

We out-number them. But only if we rally behind this plan.

Who’s with me?

- - - John Olesky

 

Retired after 43 years as a newspaper editor, including 37 in Ohio.

Grateful for my Monongah High and West Virginia University School of Journalism diploma and degree that catapulted me to a fortunate and successful career and life and financial security.

 

“Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty!”

 

Contrary to common misconception, Thomas Jefferson didn’t say or write that.

      Irish lawyer and politician John Philpot Curran put it a little differently in 1790 in Dublin when he said, in typical Irish expansive wording fashion, “The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance.”

It was later penned by author Thomas Charlton in his 1809 biography of Major General James Jackson with the more direct and succinct “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.”

American activist and liberal activist Wendell Phillips in his 1852 speech to the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society revived the phrase.

Regardless of the phrasing, the sentiment is the same: If you want to keep your freedom then you have to fight against those who would endanger it.

For example, by gerrymandering Congressional districts to give one side an unfair advantage over the other side.

It is no different than requiring one football team to have only seven players on the field while allowing its opponent to have 15 players out there at the same time.

It’s still 22 players on the field, as usual. But it’s gerrymandering the odds.

Our democracy is too precious for that.

Do you care about our liberty enough to be eternally vigilant against gerrymandering Congressional districts?

God, I hope so.

I sure do.

I am known as the Don Quixote in my family because I have battled injustices my entire life, often for those not in my family. People of color. Females. The poor, the sick, children and senior citizens.

Changing Ohio’s restricting rules, via a Constitutional amendment or any way that will work, is just another skirmish against injustice for me.

At the age of 87 I can’t have too many years left to tilt against windmills. But I won’t stop till the funeral director shows up for my body.