Legacy Media Finally Forced to Report Facts About Progressive Left's Gerrymandering Campaign

The Progressive-left dark-money power grab, otherwise known as Issue 1, took a straight right hand to the chin from the Ohio Supreme Court Tuesday night.

The ballot language passed by the Ballot Board last month was certified by a majority opinion of the Supreme Court.

Specifically, the majority said on Page 17, “What these rules require falls within the meaning of 'gerrymander.'"

The court continued, “Because the board’s use of the term 'gerrymander' is consistent with dictionary definitions and how the United States Supreme Court has used the term, it does not mislead, deceive, or defraud voters.”

As we pointed out in our story August 21st, they could call their campaign anti-gerrymandering, Diet Coke, or cheescake, but the Supreme Court majority rightly ruled it a gerrymander.

Read the opinion.

It's interesting how in 2021 and 2022, the legacy media rarely bothered to report the scathing dissenting opinions on 4-3 rulings of redistricting cases, but, my-oh-my, that was just about all they reported on Tuesday night, complaining about the Republican majority on the court. It really was a laugh out loud moment, to watch the meltdown from the left and from the media.

Two weeks ago, the editorial boards threw a fit over the ballot language, and in the same columns contradicted themselves by admitting Issue 1 did require gerrymandering based on its foundation in proportionality.

The Toledo Blade’s headline was “Ballot Board Blows It.”  But then just a few paragraphs later blew up their own narrative. “We have said that there is an element of gerrymandering in the Citizens Not Politicians amendment. It would manipulate district lines with the goal of producing political balances in the state House, state Senate and congressional delegation that reflect the state’s overall political balance.”

Duh! Additionally, the thin ice the $25 million dark-money campaign is skating on is cracking, as the newsrooms, not just the editorial boards, are now forced to start reporting some facts.

Look at these excerpts and quotes in recent stories from Ohio’s legacy newspapers about the “Political Outcomes Over People” campaign, otherwise known as Issue 1. Cleveland.com compared Issue 1 to Michigan's "Voters Not Politicians" system.

Ohio’s proposed redistricting measure includes similar criteria, but it would set up an additional requirement that Michigan’s system does not: that a certain percentage of congressional and legislative districts must be drawn to either favor Democrats or Republicans, based on the average percentage of the vote each party’s statewide candidates received in recent elections.

Here is a simple question.

Since the plan mandates that a certain percentage of congressional and legislative districts must be drawn to either favor Democrats or Republicans, isn’t that a plan designed to gerrymander fixed outcomes?

Yes! Of course it is.

Cleveland.com interviewed Jon Eguia, a Michigan State University professor and redistricting insider, who consulted with Michigan’s so-called voters panel. The Ohio campaign calls it a citizens panel. Whatever you call it, it removes the very reason for campaigns and candidate races. Eguia told cleveland.com, “...and in Ohio, the people advancing this proposal are also not proposing that competitiveness be a goal.” 

It’s called a race for a reason. In Ohio, candidates, campaigns, and issues matter. There are 15 districts in the Senate that lean Democrat. Republicans have won 8 of those districts. If Democrats can't win in districts in which they are already favored, then the district maps are not their problem -- their candidates and policies are. But, under the Issue 1 campaign, the far left “citizens panel” will decide who your representative or senator is.

The story also points out that this plan is so dismissive of voter sentiment that the voice of the voter is removed regardless of political environment:

"In addition, he (Eguia) said, emphasizing competitive districts can lead to wild swings in party control, with Republicans or Democrats winning an alarming percentage of seats in a “wave” year for either party."

What the Issue 1 dark-money campaign really wants is control for the progressive left. Control over the voters. Control over the process for raw political power. 

Read the story here.

We’ve pointed out the disaster in Michigan. When the citizen-led panel drew their first set of maps based solely on race, a federal court found that was, in fact, racial gerrymandering.

Even after the maps were “fixed” they remain broken. For the first time in 70 years, Detroit doesn’t have a black member of Congress representing the city, which has a majority black population.

“They cut Detroit up into 22 pieces,” said former Michigan representative Sherry Gay-Dagnogo. Speaking at a news conference in Columbus alongside former Ohio Representative John Barnes, she said, “(I) will never turn my back on the Black community and tell them that poison is good for you, this is poison. Issue 1 is poison because it will diminish and take away Black leadership.”

Quoted in the same story, Representative Barnes said, "This is a scheme that is designed to undermine democracy under the guise of reform of gerrymandering," a Cleveland Democrat who helped to create the Black Equity and Redistricting Fund Inc.

"This is likened to individual vigilantism ..." he said. "It's a process of people who are trying to hijack the Ohio voter system for an obvious outcome that is inconsistent with democracy and opportunities for us to build a better tomorrow."

The Cleveland.com story reiterated that very point by Professor Eguia:

If Ohio’s redistricting measure passes, Eguia continued, there would be an even greater likelihood that this will become a problem, given the emphasis on drawing a certain number of districts that favor each party.

That requirement would put more pressure on Ohio’s redistricting commission to draw more Democratic seats than there are now, Eguia said, raising the chances that they will break up Black neighborhoods into separate districts like the Michigan ones challenged in court.

So, this foreign-funded, dark-money-driven, progressive-power grab is not only funded by the D.C. deep state, it discriminates against black voters and black members of the General Assembly and Congress.

If you hated the "Snake on the Lake" and other sprawling districts drawn before more than 70% of the voters changed the process to what we have today, they’re coming back in a big way.

Because, as the Columbus Dispatch correctly reported, there is no ban on splitting cities, and no limits on how often they can be divided.

This plan is based on the flawed concept of proportionality, which equals fixed outcomes based on percentages. This is the purist definition of gerrymandering, as pointed out by the Disptach:

Create maps that closely correspond to recent statewide election results. That means if Republicans are winning statewide races by about 60% of the vote, they are entitled to be favored in about 60% of the districts.

This week we mark the one-year anniversary of  "The Views The News Excludes" with our President’s Podcast featuring Senate President Matt Huffman. He talks about Issue 1, how it substracts the constitutional protections against gerrymandering that voters overwhelmingly passed in 2015 and 2018, and instead adds gerrymandering into the Ohio Constituion.