Yost Is Right: Ohio Needs Its Census Data ASAP So We Can Fix Gerrymandering

Thank you Attorney General Dave Yost for pushing to get the census data to Ohio as soon as possible so that we can work on fixing our gerrymandered districts. The Census Bureau’s target of a 6 month delay conflicts with our State Constitutional timeframe and could destabilize our redistricting procedure.

Yost filed a lawsuit yesterday against the Bureau for not meeting the original March deadline, seeking to prevent them from “delaying the release of data beyond the earliest possible date this Court determines equitable.” I do wonder if there could have been discussions with the Bureau to reach an agreement without a lawsuit or if that approach had been attempted, but also time is of the essence and an intergovernmental lawsuit communicates the seriousness of the request and forces those discussions to be had.

Our current districts violate the US Constitution according to a federal court. The infamous duck district, snake on the lake and others are clearly not compact, and our recently amended Ohio Constitution now mandates that “Every congressional district shall be compact.” However, we can’t make the new maps since we don’t know if we’ll have 15 or 16 Congressional Districts, and we don’t have official numbers needed to create equally populated districts as required by law. Delaying the data by half a year impacts not only mapmaking but all of our Congressional candidates running for election next year.

The pandemic has caused delays in gathering the data. Some delay in reporting is likely unavoidable and might eventually require pushing our State deadlines back. Even if the lawsuit succeeds in getting the data only 1 or 2 months sooner, that may still not be enough time to develop the maps and allow for public feedback without extending our deadlines. We certainly don’t want to rush out bad data, but we do want to encourage all reasonable efforts to obtain a timely release of correct data and avoid pushing back our deadlines by too much, if at all possible.

We’ll be testing our state’s new redistricting laws for the first time, and it’s important that we get it right without added confusion. State Constitutional Amendments passed in 2015 and 2018 are designed to create less gerrymandered districts this year, and Ohioans are anxious to find out if our districts will be compact, fair and competitive or animal-shaped servants of one political party. Our redistricting process is already politically contentious, and if we are put in a situation where we need legislative changes to extend deadlines, it could make the process even more problematic.

If our timeframe is too squished, the outcome could be blamed on the process being rushed. Worse yet, if we’re forced to miss our deadlines, there could be perverse incentives to reject extensions and/or weasel out of the new bipartisan requirements. The Ohio Constitution requires Congressional maps to be approved “not later than the last day of September“, with different procedures that kick in if that doesn’t happen. It requires legislators to attempt a first pass at approving new districts with at least half of both parties, but some may argue that those requirements can be skipped if that deadline is missed and that the original timeframe must be strictly adhered to. That argument would be contrary to the spirit of the law because it would not be the fault of lawmakers’ inability to reach agreement but only because there was literally no time to create maps for them to even consider. Luckily State Senato President Huffman has expressed optimism and expressed his intention to act in good faith to extend the deadlines as needed.

We’ve already seen how extending deadlines in response to pandemic-related delays has become fertile soil for conspiracy theories and general mistrust in the electoral process, considering the contentious mail-in ballot extensions in states like Pennsylvania, so it behooves us to avoid these issues with redistricting deadlines too, if possible.

For all these reasons, we must underscore the importance of this data to our State. AG Yost is right to put pressure on the Census Bureau to overcome any inconveniences and get correct data to us ASAP.

However, if we don’t get the data until September or even midsummer, lawmakers must extend the deadlines to give a reasonable amount of time to create good maps with public feedback. It would be unreasonable to plow forward on the original timeframe or just leave the issues for the courts to decide, so I will be expecting Ohio legislators to make reasonable accommodations in response to census delays as needed.

3/1/21: Clarified that the Ohio Constitutional compactness requirement is new.

Pushback on Expediting the Census Data (3/15)

Various local governments from other states and civil rights groups have opposed Ohio’s lawsuit to expedite the census data. APNews did not identify who joined this recent opposition, but it previously consisted of plaintiffs from cities or counties in California, Washington and Virginia, as well as the Black Alliance for Just Immigration, which had plaintiffs from California and Georgia but has members around the country. This coalition was justified in supporting extra time to finish counting residents in response to pandemic delays, and is to wise to oppose uncompromising adherence to the original March 31 deadline as a result. However, we don’t have to choose sides between March and September, since Ohio’s lawsuit also allowed for “the earliest possible date this Court determines equitable” and Ohio recently proposed July as a target date.

Biden administration attorneys blamed the inflexibility of the absolute dates in our State Constitution, and State Senator Huffman had previously said, “It does demonstrate the problems of putting specifics in the Constitution”. However, federal law also uses specific calendar dates, requiring that the census data “shall, in any event, be completed, reported, and transmitted to each respective State within one year after the decennial census date” of “the first day of April” in years ending in zero. Ohio is actually one of several states with redistricting deadlines. One could argue that we could have avoided this dilemma by making our state deadlines relative to the receipt of census data, but on the other hand, perhaps we’re better off striving to maintain a fixed schedule and being able to fall back on alternative population data if census data is simply not available in a timely manner for whatever reason. Either way, our Constitutional deadlines are what they are now, and it is in our best interest to get the data ahead of them if feasible.

The Lawsuit Was Successful (5/25)

A federal judge dismissed the lawsuit on 3/24, but that decision was overruled on 5/18.

The Census Bureau has now agreed to provide Ohio’s census data by 8/16/21. Will it be enough time for public input ahead of the September deadlines?

Resources

Brennan Center Court Case Tracker of Ohio v. Coggins