Nearly every legislative and congressional election in Ohio this month had one thing in common: They were blowouts. It didn’t matter whether the winner was a Democrat or Republican, the story was the same. “I was certainly surprised by the margins,” said Rep. Scott Ryan, R-Newark, vice chairman of the Ohio House Republican Organizational Committee. “In many districts where the typical mix would be more 50-50, the races still weren’t close. That was very surprising to me.” But Secretary of State Jon Husted couldn’t muster any surprise. The partisan gerrymandering process that allowed Republicans to draw legislative and congressional seats in their favor continues to provide most general-election voters with no real option at the ballot, he said.
“One of the sad things about our elections is, it used to be the goal was you were supposed to debate ideas and develop the mandate for a policy agenda when you win,” Husted said. “We don’t have that because there’s no need for it. There’s no competition.”
… Husted said that when Trump called the elections rigged, he was wrong about the election process but had a point regarding the system. “If ‘rigged’ means that you’re trying to determine the outcome of something before you actually have the contest, how our legislative and congressional contests operate falls into that category,” he said.
Husted says Ohio’s congressional delegation should get behind a reform plan it can live with before someone puts an issue on the ballot that the lawmakers really don’t like. Most of the problem could be solved by making the process bipartisan and requiring that counties cannot be split unnecessarily, he said.
Full Article: Redistricting reform could reduce blowouts in Ohio elections | The Columbus Dispatch.