To the editor:
Selecting jurists to serve on the Ohio Supreme Court is an important decision voters are making this election year. There are currently four Republican and three Democrat justices on the Court. The sides they have taken clearly pattern differently for Democrat versus Republican justices. This is particularly significant now for the future of the redistricting work that a Yes vote on Issue 1 would put in motion.
This letter urges Ohioans to vote for the three Democrat candidates, Michael Donnelly, Melody Stewart, and Lisa Forbes. The changes in membership this will bring to the Court will make the nonpartisan mission of the citizens’ commission to rid our state of gerrymandered districts more likely to succeed.
If passed, Issue 1, Citizens Not Politicians, will assign a remapping process to a citizen’s commission equally made up of Republican, Democrat, and Independent members, none of whom are politicians or lobbyists. The citizens’ commission will carefully redistrict our state so that election results are not guaranteed in advance through gerrymandering. Every citizen’s vote will count.
The new, fair maps should be in use for the election year 2026. However, the Ohio Supreme Court has the job of assessing the maps. The Court decides whether they are acceptable.
Here is a brief history of relevant decisions made by the Court in recent years. We voted for new, non-gerrymandered maps in 2018, but the legislature-controlled mapping process produced five unfair maps, all rightly rejected by the Ohio Supreme Court. By the end of that process, it was too late to make fair maps for the 2020 elections. Later, in a four (Republican) to three (Democrat) decision, the Court decided the old, gerrymandered maps should stay in place even for the 2024 year.
Citizens Not Politicians produced the plan we’re asked to vote on this year, an Amendment to the state constitution that details the process for drawing fair maps. However, the Ballot Board, under Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose, wrote ballot language for Issue 1 that wrongly claims that the proposed amendment would create rather than get rid of gerrymandered districts. The Court largely rejected the arguments of a Citizens Not Politicians lawsuit demanding rewriting of the ballot text, leaving a misleading description of the amendment on the ballot.
Donnelly, Stewart, and Forbes will assess newly drawn maps fairly if they sit on the Court.
Democrat Michael Donnelly, running to keep a seat on the Court, has stood up against gerrymandering and for both union rights and reproductive rights. He scoffed that the justices who ratified the misleading ballot language “think that a constitutional amendment to ‘ban partisan gerrymandering’ means to ‘require’ gerrymander[ing].”
Melody Stewart, also currently on the Court, wrote the first opinion successfully rejecting partisan maps drawn to favor Republicans. She is the most experienced jurist on the Court. She has spoken against politicization, noting the bias of “the Ohio Supreme Court’s most recent ruling on the ballot language of Issue 1.”
Lisa Forbes, currently on the Appellate Court, has spoken strongly against the dishonest language of the Ballot Board’s text for Issue 1. She says “[M]ajority Republicans, in a 4-3 power play, effectively decreed the Ohio Ballot Board is free to mislead voters….”
Given the Court’s recent decisions to keep gerrymandered maps and misrepresent the proposed Citizens Not Politicians amendment, do you trust the Court’s current membership to honestly assess new maps for use? A change in the balance of the Court, putting justices in place who have histories of standing for fair districts, reproductive rights, and labor rights will better serve democracy in our state. Vote Donnelly, Stewart, and Forbes.
Birch Moonwoman
Nelsonville, Ohio
