COLUMBUS, Ohio — Issue 1, the amendment aiming to end gerrymandering that could drastically change the makeup of the Ohio Statehouse, is on the ballot this election.
I tried to simplify what it would really do with a game. Tell me — what do these look like?
We spoke with dozens of viewers and readers over the past few weeks — stopping them at random and showing them the cutouts. I showed cutouts of Senate Districts 18, 27 and 28.
"Oh it looks like an animal to me," Lois Osborne, a Lake County voter, responded.
"I have not a clue," Ron Robertson from Painesville said. "A school parking lot?"
"Half a gun," voter Marcelo Marques added.
Some of the most popular answers are shown in our video — different animals, guns, staircases, a device to smoke marijuana and a toilet.
"Well, all of these are actually districts in Ohio," I told each interviewee.
The responses? Mainly bewilderment, frustration and some anger.
Robertson was surprised to learn that State Sen. Jerry Cirino (R-Kirtland) represents not only him and all of Lake but also carve-outs of Cuyahoga County — cities and villages over an hour away.
"I had no idea it went that far south," Robertson said. "It's kind of strange because they're not any part of this area at all, actually."
He and Marques don't think the areas have similar needs at all.
"I believe they have no idea they even belong to the same district," Marques added.
Senate District 18 starts at North Madison on the edge of Lake County, goes down through Painesville, Mentor, Wickliffe and dives into the east side suburbs of Cuyahoga County — with Mayfield, down to Pepper Pike, Solon, Bedford, west to Independence, down to Brecksville and then up to Newburgh Heights.
"It's very far away and not too many of us even have been there," she said about Newburgh Heights.
So we went from one end of the district to the other. From Madison to Newburgh Heights — an hour drive without major traffic.
"It's one of those like Rorschach tests?" Helen Harris, a Cuyahoga County voter, asked me.
She and Cam Jones debated the cutouts, wondering if the districts I showed were stairs, other types of buildings or shadows.
"I see a picture of a horse's head maybe," Harris continued while looking at S.D. 27.
"I see a person's face," Jones added.
When I told them the answer, they laughed incredulously, indicating that they should have thought of that. But this isn't an actual laughing matter, Harris said.
Harris and Jones had no idea that the senator lived an hour from them — or that he was a staunch Republican.
"It makes me a little angry that that exists," she said. "Really, in 2024 — almost 25, in our society, we still have to deal with discrepancies like that."
You can see the differences even just driving through each area, with homes, buildings and police presence.
Kirtland Hills in Lake County has a median household income of $150,000, while Newburgh Heights in Cuyahoga is $50,000. One is a Republican stronghold, and the other is Democratic.
The Cuyahoga areas that District 18 now has deep blue areas like Pepper Pike, Bedford and Bedford Heights — which voted 90% for President Joe Biden in 2020.
"We all differ in our wants and likes and dislikes and in our moral issues that we deal with," Harris said.
This isn’t just a challenge for voters. When the map was first made, it was shocking for Cirino.
"A lot of the voters who voted for me four years ago are no longer in my district," he told me.
When he was elected in 2020, Cirino didn’t have Cuyahoga County but more rural areas of Portage and Geauga. Since the new maps came out in 2023, he has needed to adjust.
"I've been working very hard at getting known in the new communities to my district," he said. "When the map changes and we get new communities that we now will represent, it just causes us to have to work harder, which I don't mind."
So why does the district look like this?
Case Western Reserve University elections law professor Atiba Ellis explains that it is due to the way Ohio draws its legislative and congressional maps.
"Gerrymandering is basically the ability to draw maps to make a party more powerful than they are popular," Ellis, the nonpartisan expert, said. "The problem is we can draw maps to create more districts where it's easier for Republicans to win than it is for Democrats."
Former President Donald Trump won Ohio in both elections by eight points, garnering 51% of the vote in 2016 and 53% in 2020.
Ohio is clearly a red state now, but it isn't nearly as red as the legislative makeup, Ellis explained.
"They've been able to draw districts so that there are more districts that work for the advantage of Republican officeholders than there are roughly the number of people who vote for Republicans across the state," he said.
The Ohio Senate has 33 members: 26 Republicans and 7 Democrats. The Republicans make up nearly 80% of the chamber.
The Ohio House has 99 members: 67 Republicans and 32 Democrats. The Republicans make up nearly 70% of the chamber.
Even when Gov. Mike DeWine won reelection in 2022 by a large margin, he only received 62% of the vote. He won with 50% of the vote in 2018.
When these Democratic strongholds are getting carved into conservative-leaning Lake County, Ellis shows it dilutes their voting power.
"I'm breaking up a big block of people who vote one way so that that group can't come together and exercise their voice," he said. "So what that means is the folks who are on the bad end of the gerrymander end up getting less representation."
Cirino denied that his district is gerrymandered — or that his constituents would be getting less representation.
"I'm not seeing disparities," the lawmaker said. "Their needs are different and their interests are a little bit different, but I have no problem representing all of those different communities."
Because Lake County has more rural and urban areas, he thinks Cuyahoga can be viewed the same way.
He argues that the redistricting process is a “mathematical game,” since the average senate district needs to have roughly 350,000-375,000 people.
"Communities have to be moved back and forth or moved around a little bit so that we don't have somebody with 500,000 people and somebody with 200,000 people," Cirino said.
Osborne, the Lake County voter, doesn't buy that, which is why she voted in support of Issue 1.
"I'm very upset because obviously this was drawn to get a certain individual elected," she said. "Gerrymandering is basically rigging the election, it's cheating."
Currently, Ohio lawmakers draw the maps — ones that directly impact them and their colleagues.
We broke down what Issue 1 will do.
RELATED: What does a yes vote on Ohio Issue 1 mean? What does a no vote mean?
Voting yes on Issue 1 would create a 15-member Ohio Citizens Redistricting Commission (OCRC), made up of Republican, Democratic and independent citizens who broadly represent the different geographic areas and demographics of the state.
It bans current or former politicians, political party officials, lobbyists and large political donors from sitting on the commission.
It requires fair and impartial districts by making it unconstitutional to draw voting districts that discriminate against or favor any political party or individual politician. It also mandates the commission to operate under an open and independent process.
The commissioners would draw the maps based on federal law, also taking into account past election data on partisan preferences. The commission would make sure that each district has a reasonably equal population and that communities of interest are kept together.
Voting no on Issue 1 would be rejecting the independent commission proposal and keeping the current setup. Voting no could also mean you are hopeful that Republicans will keep to their word of proposing a "solution" to make the system better in the future months.
Cirino is urging everyone to vote no, saying it takes away accountability because the commissioners can't be voted out; only a fellow commissioner can move to remove them.
This argument has been made by other politicos we interviewed in Sept.
RELATED: What is Ohio Issue 1? We explain the redistricting amendment
He also said it is just a way for Democrats to gain control.
"They can't get legislative majorities and they can't get statewide offices," Cirino said. "This is another method of trying to dictate how the maps are laid out."
Ellis said that Issue 1 isn't perfect, but it is a hell of a lot better than the current system.
"The heart of the gerrymandering problem is that the politicians get to choose their voters rather than the voters choosing the politicians," Ellis said. "Issue 1 helps fix that problem by creating a citizen-led commission that is not beholden to any politicians."
Most voters we spoke with don't trust any politician; thus, they don't want Republicans or Democrats in charge of mapmaking. Even voters who didn't know what Issue 1 was about said they wanted regular citizens to be in charge of making the maps.
It needs to change," Harris said. "It's too partisan as far as I'm concerned."
Follow WEWS statehouse reporter Morgan Trau on Twitter and Facebook.
