Support for the statewide broadcast of the state of Ohio comes from medical mutual, providing more than 1.4 million Ohioans peace of mind with a selection of health insurance plans online at Med Mutual dot com slash Ohio by the law offices of Porter, Wright, Morris and Arthur LLP, now with eight locations across the country.

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Moore and Porter Wright dot com and from the Ohio Education Association, representing 124,000 members who work to inspire their students to think creatively and experience the joy of learning online at OHEA.org A huge day at the Ohio Supreme Court, which heard three cases that claim the Republican created Ohio House and Senate maps are unconstitutionally gerrymandered and the leaders of the Senate speak out on vaccines and mandates proposed changes to voting and election laws, abortion and more.

All this weekend, the state of Ohio.

Welcome to the state of Ohio, I'm Karen Kasler.

The claim that Ohio's new state legislative district maps violate the anti gerrymandering reforms passed by voters in 2015 took center stage at the Ohio Supreme Court on Wednesday.

State House correspondent Andy Chow has a recap of the arguments in three cases that challenge the maps drawn by Republicans and approved by the five Republicans on the seven member Ohio Redistricting Commission in September.

As Frieda Levinson stood before the Ohio Supreme Court to argue against the newly drawn district maps for the Ohio House and Senate, she recalled the same court case ten years ago.

But the lawyer with the ACLU of Ohio representing the League of Women Voters of Ohio, said back then the court ruled the state didn't have the language in the Constitution to define anti gerrymandering policies.

The court, in its opinion, paragraph 14, specified the kind of language it would need.

No apportionment plan shall be drawn with the intent of favoring or just favoring a political party.

Ohio voters listened and in 2015 voted overwhelmingly in a bipartisan basis to supply this.

Levinson said that ruling and the 2015 vote armed the state with a new set of constitutional guidelines.

She told the court that the Ohio Redistricting Commission violated anti gerrymandering policies and those standards by drawing maps that give Republicans a 63% majority in the State House.

She cites language in the 2015 reforms that says maps must reflect a proportional district balance of Ohio voters political preference.

Based on the last decade of statewide elections, the state splits about 54% Republican and 46% Democratic, while the new Ohio House map creates 62 Republican favored seats to 37 Democratic favored seats.

The Ohio Senate map splits 23 Republican seats to ten Democratic seats.

Philip Strack is an attorney from North Carolina and involved in a redistricting case there.

He represented Republican House Speaker Bob Cup and Senate President Matt Huffman on the Ohio Redistricting Commission.

Stracke argued that the provision saying the maps should reflect the Partizan makeup of Ohio did not need to be followed because the commission complied with other sections of the Constitution.

And Stracke said the commission attempted to compromise by avoiding a map that would have been worse for Democrats.

The commission could have said, You know what, we can't cut a deal.

We've complied with the anti gerrymandering requirements.

We're going to go back and we're going to adopt that 67 Republican leaning House plan.

We're going to do that because we can.

They didn't do that.

The map makers have said the state's Partizan breakdown could be considered 81% Republican, since that's how many times a GOP candidate won a statewide race, an argument fellow Republican Chief Justice Maureen O'Connor called into question.

You put them in the Republican column and there's no equivalent number or representation of all of the other party, Democrat or Democratic leaning independents that voted.

There's no accounting for their vote.

O'Connor is considered to be the possible swing vote on a court that splits 43 with a Republican majority.

She voted against the maps that were upheld ten years ago, which also created a Republ in the statehouse.

There's no telling when a ruling will come out, but it's likely to be a few weeks because filing deadlines for candidates are in February.

If the court rules against the maps, it's likely the Ohio Redistricting Commission will have to redraw the plans.

Andy Chow, Statehouse News Bureau.

Activists opposing the legislative maps capped months of demonstrations and events they've been doing by watching the arguments inside, then rallying outside the Ohio Supreme Court building.

The case involving the congressional map is not likely to be heard by the court until at least next month.

This week, state lawmakers started to wrap the first year of the two year legislative session by passing the long awaited sports betting bill.

It puts the authority over the industry with the Casino Control Commission and sets up 25 Class A licenses for mobile betting.

40 Class B licenses for brick and mortar betting at the eleven casinos and racing shows, and for professional sports teams and thousands of Class C licenses for liquor permit holders to ha It would also impose a 10% tax on gaming receipts, with the money going to education if it's signed.

Sports betting could start before January first, 2023.

There are a lot of other bills and issues awaiting legislators after the holiday break.

This week, I continued an annual tradition of sitting down with the Republican and Democratic leaders of the Ohio Senate.

Matt Huffman ending his first year as Senate president and leader of the chamber's 25 Republicans and Minority Leader Kenny Yougo, who heads the eight member Democratic caucus.

Let's start with something we were talking about a year ago when the first coronavirus vaccines were being distributed around the world.

Now here we are a year later talking about a bill that would ban public and private entities from acquiring those vaccines that haven't had full FDA approval would create broad exemptions for basically anyone who wants an exemption from the COVID vaccine banned.

It could get it and also would ban businesses from requiring proof of vaccination status or vaccine passports.

That bill was passed the House after a long process that got it to that point.

Let me start with you, President Hoffman.

You said you've been loath to tell businesses how to run their operations here, but why is this even a bill?

I mean, medical professionals say vaccines are the best way out of the pandemic.

Vaccine mandates have been shown to work.

Polls show people are OK with vaccine mandates.

Is this a small but very vocal minority that's really controlling this discussion?

Well, I disagree with some of the premises in your question.

I don't think polls show that vaccine mandates are very popular, and in fact, there's a broad swath of the population who are not going to take a vaccine no matter what some other medical professional says.

And I think the last time that I I was on the show, maybe you had asked me the number of Republican senators who had had the vaccine.

And I think your point of your question was a lot of folks that some of the people weren't taking the vaccine and what percentage of it was.

The percentage of folks in the health profession was higher than the Republican Senate caucus.

And the point is that there there are questions about whether without regard to the efficacy of vaccines, whether people want to take them or not.

And that is a personal choice.

So I think we have to start with the premi someone in authority says it's OK that it is OK for everybody all the time.

So that's the first thing.

I think the second thing is that when you speak of mandates in, we have to separate out the private sector from the public sector.

And the real problem is that people are are losing are going to lose their job in many situations now, free marketeers would say that's just the way it works.

You know, you lose your job, but you know, if you're if you, for example, live in rural Ohio and you're taking care of your mother and you're going to lose your job and they say, you know, go work 50 miles away at the next hospital, that's not a real solution.

I don't want to tell private businesses what to how to run their business, and I've said that many times.

We do know, of course, that we put a lot of health and safety restrictions on businesses.

So the question is, you know, is this appropriate?

A lot of it is being driven by the federal government's mandates hundred employers or more or health care.

Which is tied up in the courts right now and temporarily.

All right.

And I think that's all going to go away.

I don't think the president has the authority to issue such orders, and I think the courts will say so.

So it's a it's a complex question that, you know, the bill came over like bills that deal with serious issues like this.

We they deserve to have hearings and that's what we're doing right now.

Alito, are you going to ask you the vaccine or test mandate, as we just mentioned, is been hauled by the courts.

And as President, Hoffman said some hospitals are even suspending their vaccine mandates because they've got staff that are saying that they would rather walk off the job and take the vaccine.

So doesn't that suggest there is a legitimate argument to be made against a vaccine mandate?

And if vaccines work, which they do, by the way, shouldn't we trust people to just go get their shots on their own without the government telling them to?

Well, you know, we should be able to trust people to do the right thing, but that doesn't necessarily do.

We're going to do it.

Just like driving down to Columbus, the State House, there's signs that are posted and speed limit 70 miles an hour.

They expect us to adhere to that and drive 70 miles an hour.

I can guarantee you nobody drives 70 miles an hour.

OK.

Very simple.

I got mine.

I got the booster shot.

It didn't kill anybody.

It does save lives.

It from the beginning, it became very political.

If you recall, when the pandemic first hit and we were asked to wear a mask into the statehouse, you looked at the Democratic side and everyone was wearing a mask.

You look at the Republican side and it wasn't that way.

And and then it turned into a situation where it seemed to be growing almost daily, but more on a political basis than medical.

Is it a popular decision?

No, it's not.

Is it a necessary decision?

I think it is.

But again, it's something it's very, very simple, you know?

You know, I think I think back to John F Kennedy, and he gave a quote that I picked up.

And says, let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer, but the right answer.

Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past.

But let us accept our responsibility for the future, and I think that's what we're doing.

We're laying down the gantlet right now to saying that we need to get vaccinated.

We need to do our parts with the hospitals.

I know Cleveland Clinic and university hospitals are two big mainstays in Cleveland.

They posted that message that if you're not vaccinated, you're going to lose your job and how many nurses that we're out of here.

So they backed down.

They said, OK, well, maybe, maybe we took it a little too far.

The bottom line is everyone's got to get together and talk.

We've got to communicate with one another.

If we do that, there's a whole lot we can accomplish.

But when you put 11 side and variant, you're drawing a line in the sand and the other side, and they have their line in saying, we're not getting anything accomplished.

And that's right, you know, I would encourage all of us to work together on these issues and let's resolve them.

We can do it.

I want to ask you about two bills that are in the House that would change voting and election laws.

one would create an online ballot request system with two forms of ID to allow ballot drop boxes only boards of elections to be used ten days before the election.

And it would also shorten the window to request early ballots bans in-person voting the day before the election.

The other one would eliminate secure ballot drop boxes at all.

A board of election sites cut the 28 day early voting period to 13 and then later to six would bring back the requirement that eliminated the expansion of early voting to provide an excuse to ask for a mail in ballot.

And it would be on the Secretary of State from mailing out absentee ballot applications for general elections, which has been done since 2012.

So I want to start with you on this one leader.

How do you feel that these are, as some Democrats call them, attacks on democracy?

Or are they real attempts to try to deal with fraud?

I have to believe from my heart that they have nothing to do with fraud.

You know, and everything to do with voter suppression, the ballot.

Boxes that we collected, I witnessed several of them during the election of the president.

I drove around.

I witnessed the police officer standing watching the drop box.

I watched the lanes, how well and efficiently they were run.

It made voting easier.

And that's what we should be.

All of us should be doing.

We're all elected officials.

We rely on our our constituents to come out and vote for us.

So if I'm going to spend a lot of time and money and energy campaigning and asking for your vote, I'll make sure that we make your vote as easy as possible to get be counted.

And that's what we're trying to do.

And whether or not we eliminate the drop boxes or not, it makes it more it makes it more challenging.

And during this pandemic, when you're asking people to keep their distance to avoid long lines, some people wear a mask.

Some people do not wear a mask when they're inside a building.

It's it presents challenges that are hard, hard to write off as something that's a legitimate concern for people.

You know, I don't I don't see there's a history.

I don't know.

One's proven showed me any proof that we have a significant problem that needs just this type of addressing.

And even the last two Republican secretaries of state have said that voter fraud is basically nonexistent in Ohio.

So let me ask you, President Hoffman, are these attacks on democracy or reasonable efforts to battle fraud, which doesn't seem to really be a real threat in Ohio's election system?

Just to be clear, that's a House bill, right?

You're talking about these are both House bills, to be very clear.

So I'm not going to try to defend.

I have to see the language and all that.

So I'll let me let me say a few things.

Right now, there's nothing in law about drop boxes and there should be.

We should, in my opinion, we should say there's one drop box.

It's at the board of elections.

And I'll tell you why.

I think that's important.

But right now, there's nothing.

So any secretary of state could say I'm eliminating drop boxes.

We don't know what the next secretary of state may say or do, or they may say, we're going to have one on every street corner, which we also have our mailboxes.

The problem with that is in one of the substantial problems in our voting system right now is not only the reliance on, but the advocacy for a mail in system.

There are multiple problems.

one right now is you have to the time period when you can request if you you can up to, I think it's three days .

The problem is you're going to request your, but you're going to rely on that.

You're going to question your ballot, you're not going to get it back on time or if you mail it back and it's not going to get there in time to be counted.

So that that's a problem.

Verifying signatures is a problem.

We have 28 days to do that in the state of Ohio.

And bills that would cut that down.

I understand that.

Again, I'm not.

I'm not here to defend some House bill that got passed.

My my point is we I think our secretary of state and our policy in the state of Ohio should be encouraging in-person voting for those who can do that.

And there are a lot of problems with the mail in system one of them.

But the request that I mentioned, we've suggested taking shortening that time period and we were we were attacked as though we were trying to hurt.

And this is the Senate proposal as though we were trying to eliminate and we're talking about eliminating Monday, which is Democratic and Republican folks want to do that.

So it's like any change seems to be if it's suggested by a Republican, we're attacking the right to vote.

And so some of that is is unfair.

I think the U.S. Supreme Court sort of case out of Mississippi that could overturn Roe versus Wade.

That could mean that some abortion legislation in Ohio would take effect very quickly, such as the so-called heartbeat law leader.

You go with the overturning of Roe seeming to be on the horizon.

What are Democrats doing to prepare?

Is there any legislation that you're looking at that tries to deal with what could be happening that could actually pass in Ohi Well, Karen, I think right now we have to wait and see what the Supreme Court does.

I think we kind of know what they're going to do, which is going to.

It's hard, hard to defend that, though, when it's been in existence for 50 years with no problems, when it's worked, when it's protected.

The rights of women all over this country and the voices have been loud and they've been clear what they want to see happen.

And we know the fact that because of, again, the role that politics plays and we have to stop this, we have to start working together.

And I've maintained this to my entire political career.

I did it as a union leader as well.

When you work together, you can make things happen for the good.

There is no good to come out of this decision from the Supreme Court and just doesn't there.

But they're going to overturn.

A lot has been in existence for 50 years that has protected our women, protected families, and now we're always somewhere to turn everybody into criminals.

And I hate to see what's going to happen.

We know what's going to happen.

There's going to be those basement abortions or vetoes, garage abortions.

And it's not just Democrats all getting the abortions.

There's Republicans getting abortions, too.

They've been going on for.

Years and years and years, I would much rather see protection rights in there for the women and for the doctors because you're under attack right now and are as well under these new laws that are trying to pass and protect our women all over the country and especially here to stay.

While President Hoffman or Republicans considering other any other legislation with the possibility that Roe will be overturned and is is banning abortion really a good idea?

I mean, murder is banned and we still have murders.

I mean, to leader UCOS Point, just because you ban abortion doesn't mean it's not going to happen in some ways, and it just makes it less safe and less less accessible.

Yeah.

Banning abortion is is a great idea.

And if you believe, as I believe, that an unborn child is a person and is entitled to protection under the United States and Ohio constitutions, I disagree with leader UCOS that it's worked very well over the last 50 years.

And one of the reasons is that the intellectual premise, the science that Roe versus Wade is based on was false.

There are a lot of things that Justice Blackmun included in his opinion that were based on false information.

Now, whether he knew that or not, or he believed what it is that was being put in front of him, the rest of the court did.

That's one thing.

And it was false what was in Casey versus Planned Parenthood in 1992?

And a lot of that has come to light, and a lot of it is just advances in science.

We know what a child at 15 weeks is like, which maybe we didn't know 50 years ago.

So I think that's I don't, you know, never know what Supreme Court is going to do, right?

But if they do, then I think we need to advance legislation that's going to protect a person to protect life, and that's our responsibility under the Constitution.

And finally, I want to close with something that you guys been talking about throughout this interview, this idea of partizanship that's been marking politics in the last few years, it seems to be more pronounced in the house.

But certainly, it's been clear in the debate over the new legislative and congressional maps and other bills that Democrats have said they've been left out of the process in dealing with and have been surprised at what they've seen.

So President Hoffman, you're the leader of the Senate.

What can you do about this or is there anything you want to do?

Is it basically that Republicans run the show and Democrats have to deal?

Well, yeah.

I mean, I disagree that partizanship is any different now than it ever was.

In fact, I have.

I think one of the things that people probably view is it's in the old days where you could write a letter and say, and you know, someone advise you to put it in the desk and decide tomorrow morning if you want to do it.

Well, people say what they're thinking right away.

And they also can say it anonymously, but to lots and lots of people by making up a weird name and tweeting it out.

I tell people, and I don't I don't have Twitter on my phone.

I don't look at it.

You know, the part where this tagging you that, well, that's fine.

Where you know, it says all these tweets are my own.

None of my tweets are my own, somebody else's, you know, and we send out stuff that we think is is informational for for the Ohio Senate.

So, you know, the answer is, and I believe this is the way Abraham Lincoln.

His philosophy was if if there are things that you can do for the person on the other side of the aisle.

But it doesn't affect.

It's significant issue like abortion.

As we're talking about that, I'm going to do it.

It's kind of Uko comes to me and says, Hey, can we do this today?

And now does that always mean that the Democrats get whatever they want?

No.

But we passed our budget 32 to one in the Senate.

Does that mean there's a terrible amount of partizanship in the Ohio Senate?

I think that means there's not now.

There are things that Kennedy didn't like, that I did.

There's things that Kenny says that I don't like either.

But we're sitting here right now.

You actually arrive for this interview together.

Yes.

Yes, yes.

We didn't write a car here tonight.

Yes, we did.

So I, you know, I just, you know, I practiced law for 35 years and I get angry at another lawyer.

He gets angry at me.

You know, then we go to the Bar Association Christmas party together, and that's just, you know, life.

Well, later, you know, Democrats have been in the minority since 1986.

There are eight Democrats, compared to 25 people on President Hoffman's side.

At what point does this feel like a lost cause to you?

At what point do you feel like you can't get through and that you this the the bills that you don't know anything about that you're surprised about really start to to be a concern?

Well, I think if you've watched my career since 2005 as a legislator, I've never let that stop me.

I've always worked hard to get along with both sides of the aisle because I think it's necessary and important.

I like this gentleman as a friend.

Yeah, we disagree.

But you know, I just gripped my wife at times too doesn't mean I'm going to throw it out the window, you know, because I.

We just have some disagreements.

So we're going to continue to work together and we have and the president happened just said something that we passed a budget that was after we went to conference committee and that was after you and I had a conversation before that you had eight no votes in our caucus.

OK, but what you and I had, we talked, we communicated.

We expressed our my concerns and you some expressed some of your concerns.

And next thing you know, we had a 32 to one vote.

I think that's impressive.

And that's why if you recall, my floor speech that day wasn't about the budget, it was about my favorite word.

That's hope.

And I just want to remind some people of Martin Luther King quote like kind of apropos for this moment in time.

The richer we have become material or materially, the poorer we have become, morally and spiritually, we have learned to fly in the air like birds and swim in the sea like fish.

But we have not learned a simple art of living together as brothers.

And that's what we need to do, and we can do it, we can do it and we can work together.

And there's no issue that's so, so severe that Senator Huffman and I can't come together at one point in time and reach some type of conclusion that he may not get everything that he wants.

I may not get everything that I want, but it's something that we can both take back to our caucus and say, Hey, listen, I think this is a fair proposal, and I think this will work.

And that's it for this week for my colleagues at the Statehouse News Bureau of Ohio Public Radio and Television.

Thanks for watching.

Please check out our web site at State News dot org, and you can follow us on the show on Facebook and Twitter.

And please join us again next time for the state of Ohio.

Support for the statewide broadcast of the state of Ohio comes from medical mutual, providing more than 1.4 million Ohioans peace of mind with a selection of health insurance plans online at Med Mutual dot com slash Ohio by the law offices of Porter, Wright, Morris and Arthur LLP, now with eight locations across the country.

Porter Wright is a legal partner with a new perspective to the business community.

More at Porter Wright dot com and from the Ohio Education Association, representing 124,000 members who work to inspire their students to think creatively and experience the joy of learning online at OHEA.org