Thanks a lot, Ohio Democratic Party. People like me have spent the last month and a half — our pre-holiday time — diligently gathering signatures to repeal the GOP-created Congressional map that gives them a 12-4 advantage in a 50/50 state and creates no competitive districts.
Then on Monday a nonpartisan report, spearheaded by the League of Women Voters of Ohio and Ohio Citizen Action, came out, revealing the secrecy and borderline corruption behind the map-making process.
http://www.moneyinpoliticsohio.org/...
It turned out that the map wasn't drawn by the legislative committee charged with doing so but by a secret cabal controlled by House Speaker John Boehner, not legally part of the process. It turns out that the public hearings they held were all charades and that not one word spoken at those hearings meant anything.
That should have given us momentum and some muscle behind our demands. And despite a pessimistic story from the Cleveland Plain Dealer last week, we were well on track to get the signatures. And the Republicans knew it, and they did come back to the table tonight (after wasting the last week talking about abortion).
A lot of the discussion circled around the expensive dual primaries necessitated by Republican intransigence on the map. But in return for uniting the primaries, the legislative Democrats agreed to an only slightly less awful variant on the map created by that undemocratic, locked-door process.
Here's the statement from the Ohio Democratic Party:
http://ohiodems.org/...
I'm especially cynical about this:
I also commend Democratic leaders for creating a task force on redistricting reform and for saving $15 million in taxpayer funds by reversing Republicans’ plan for an unnecessary second primary election.
A "task force." Isn't that special? That "task force" would partially comprise the very same Republican legislators that made a mockery of the districting process. Now that they have their map for the next decade, where is their motivation for "reform"? They probably won't even come to meetings.
And ultimately, even if they were sincere about reform, they would likely come up with something like what Republican Secretary of State Jon Husted likes to brag he introduced in the last session when he was a state representative: an expanded group requiring a certain amount of minority party buy-in. And sorry, that's no longer good enough. Come on, someone, step up and do what we really need: start a drive for a constitutional amendment creating a nonpartisan districting commission starting immediately, with guidelines decreeing compactness, community unity, as much competitiveness as possible and — oh yes! — a "Jan Brewer clause" prohibiting the governor from removing any members of the commission.