With days to draw new state House and Senate maps, the seven-member Ohio Redistricting Commission set some bare-bones guidelines for the task ahead of it: work together and try to match the statewide voting preferences of Ohioans.
Those statewide voting preferences amount to about 54% of voters preferring GOP candidates and about 46% selecting Democratic ones, the court ruled last week, giving the commission 10 days to redraw maps. That could lead to about 54 GOP-leaning seats and 45 Democratic-leaning seats in the Ohio House.
"They've determined that that needs to be closely followed, or the number of seats needs to closely follow that ratio," said Speaker Bob Cupp, R-Lima, a co-chairman of the commission, which met Tuesday morning. "So, we're working to comply with the decision."
