Acting in secret, emails and testimony show, Ohio Republicans designed the current congressional map in 2011 with a specific purpose in mind – to all-but-guarantee results of each election by creating 12 safe Republican districts and four for the Democrats.
This was done by packing as many Democrats as possible into as few districts as possible.
Bob Bennett, former Ohio Republican Party chairman, told The Plain Dealer ahead of 2001 map drawing that creating a 13-3 split would spread things too thin for the GOP, increasing the chances of Republicans losing some seats unexpectedly.
Map designers created an index to test their maps against worst-case scenarios in voter swings. Their design worked perfectly, with none of the seats changing party hands through the 2012, 2014, 2016 and 2018 elections.
Republicans in 2011 controlled all three steps in the approval process – the Ohio House, the Ohio Senate and the governor’s office. They also held all three at map-drawing time in 2001.
This wasn’t the case in 1971, 1981 and 1991, and the maps approved in those years produced results more representative of Ohio’s political makeup.
