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Tens of thousands cast ballots in the first week of early voting.

And the first of two conversations about the redistricting overhaul known as issue one, this time with the author of the amendment who has strong words about the campaign.

That's this week in the state of Ohio.

Welcome to the state of Ohio.

I'm Karen Kasler.

Early voting is underway in Ohio as of Tuesday at 7:00 am.

State House correspondent Sarah Donaldson started early on the first day to talk to people who are also getting a jump on casting their ballots.

I'm here at the Franklin County Board of Elections, where early voting has been underway for more than an hour.

There's not a line outside, but there's a queue inside, and it's busy, but it's moving pretty fast.

The parking lot has been bustling.

In central Ohio, the earliest voters Tuesday morning were met with brisk, sunny fall weather.

Tom Brown, from northwest Columbus says from the front door to the exit door, it took him about 20 minutes to vote at the Franklin County Board of Elections.

The busy parking lot gave him pause, but he says it turns out to be a seamless process.

It's not rocket.

Science is voting.

It's something that we have a right to do.

Brown says he had no reason to wait for more weeks, but everything pretty much baked in at this point.

You know the issues, you know what's there.

You know where you've been.

You know where you want to go.

So it's like driving a car.

Don't look back, look forward.

With more than 1.3 million people living within Franklin County's borders, it's the state's most populous county, according to the last census.

Regular voters here are accustomed to long lines at the county single early voting center.

But the board has added square footage and more machines since the March primary election.

There's a couple of businesses that have gone out of business up here in our in our block that we've the county has taken over.

Board spokesperson Erin Sellers says this should mean lines will form outside less often, with more dedicated room to queue inside out of the elements.

We think that we'll be able to vote about 1000 people an hour, which is certainly an increase from what we've been able to do in past years.

So the hope is, is that we can mitigate the lines.

Obviously, there's gonna be a lot of people that come, there are going to be lines, but certainly we can move through them pretty quickly.

Although the historic presidential election is drawing Ohioans to the polls down, ballot races have some serious pull, too.

This is the first presidential election.

19 year old Levi Freeville is eligible to vote in, but they said issue one was almost equally a priority for them.

After making the drive with a friend who also attends Wright State University the night before, Freeville voted yes on the proposed constitutional amendment that changes Ohio's political redistricting process.

Politicians have a lot of control over how they decide how the people are grouped, and it should be decided by the people that live there, not the politicians.

But Freeville did not vote in the second largest race in the state and one of the tightest in the country.

The US Senate race between incumbent Sherrod Brown, a Democrat, and challenger Bernie Marino, a Republican.

Later in the day, both men rallied nearby.

Alice Poindexter, from the South Linden neighborhood says her vote is less for her.

These days, I'm voting for my grandchildren and their children.

This means the future of our country and the future for them as well.

Early voting runs through November 3rd at Ohio's 88 county Board of Elections, and Election day is November 5th.

Sara Donaldson, Statehouse News Bureau.

The Secretary of State's office reports almost 110,000 ballots have been cast by mail, in person or deposited into drop boxes.

Over a million absentee ballots have been sent out.

One driver for many voters is issue one, the complicated amendment to overhaul the redistricting process used for the first time in 2021, the Ohio Redistricting Commission approved maps that were ruled unconstitutionally gerrymandered seven times by the Ohio Supreme Court's three Democrats and Republican Chief Justice Maureen O'Connor.

A federal court allowed the maps to be used in 2022.

And after O'Connor retired that year, the maps were tweaked and then unanimously approved earlier this year.

I'll be talking to both yes and no campaigns this week.

Maureen O'Connor, the author of the amendment.

The amendment requires maps to be drawn based on a proportionality formula that corresponds closely with the results of the last six statewide elections.

So if voters approve issue one, that would mean the results of statewide elections in 2018, 2020 and 2022 would be factored in.

So so right now, without factoring in the results of 2024, because we don't know those yet, there will be a breakdown about 57% Republican districts, 43% Democratic districts.

Is my math correct?

I don't know, I don't do the math for that kind of thing because it doesn't matter to me how the chips fall.

Just so it's a fair process in the map drawing, and that's one of the most important things that I can communicate about this is that this is not an effort, like many people deceptively are saying, to turn Ohio blue.

That is not the intent of this, amendment.

It is to have citizens draw fair representatives, voting districts for the state House and for Congress.

And people are excited about this, and with good reason.

And there's, you know, so many reasons why they are.

And I'm sure we'll get into it in our conversation.

But this proportionality that you mentioned is in the Constitution now.

Okay.

It just goes back ten years in when we passed legislation in 15 and 18.

The citizens, by the way, those amendments were drafted by the legislature.

They were not a citizens initiated, amendment.

This one is this is purely citizens.

So when they were, drafted in the current process, as in our Ohio Constitution, now, they do mention, you know, this proportionality.

And it was a factor in the seven maps that we declared unconstitutional.

And I'm going to give you an example, if I may.

You know, you're going to have districts that are going to lean right red and you're going to have districts that are going to lean Democrat.

Okay.

And these are the districts we're talking about either proportionality in the districts that they wanted to tag as.

And this is in the past, these these gerrymandered maps.

They wanted to tag as Democratic.

It was 50.003 favor a Democrat, you know, name or, you know, designation 50.003 now, to me, that's a toss up to anybody that's a toss up.

Nope.

That's in the D column.

And that's going to meet the criteria in the R column.

There wasn't anything near the 50.003 that they had in the Democratic, you know, column.

So if that isn't an indicator that there's something wrong, then I don't know what is.

I mean, there's many others, obviously.

The way that amendment was written, both 15 and 18, but probably the most, damning thing in our constitution now is the what I call the Trojan horse.

It's the redistricting commission.

It's the make up of the redistricting commission that's embedded in the constitutional amendments.

Nobody thought too much of it at the time.

And why?

Because it was a trust.

You know, exercise.

We're going to trust these politicians that are populating the redistricting commission to do the right thing, to have integrity, to operate in good faith.

All right.

Silly, silly us.

You know, it the system's broken.

It's broken because politicians, occupy all seats in the redistricting commission.

And politicians will.

Number one, preserve their own personal power and status, in, government.

And they were also going to try and strengthen their party's presence.

Their party's power.

And to do that, they gerrymander.

Ohio's one of the ten worst gerrymandered, states in the country.

Not a very noble distinction, but it's true.

And I also want to be very clear.

Gerrymandering is not just, something done by Republicans and something done by, you know, and not Democrats, because there's plenty of examples across the country where states that have a majority, Democrats have, you know, engaged in gerrymandering.

So it's it's a, I call it an equal opportunity offender.

The commission that would draw this, these maps would start with a pool of 90 candidates to be whittled down to 45, and then the 15 members would be selected from that pool.

All of this involving a professional search firm that's screening these candidates.

How do you find 90 people in Ohio?

30 each from both major parties and 30 unaffiliated voters who want to participate in the redistricting process, but who are not currently or formerly politicians, lobbyists or people with connections to politics.

Other states have done it, and they've done it.

You know, by just having people apply.

There will be an application process.

There'll be an application to fill out.

And that application will allow the volunteer, the citizens, to begin the process.

All right.

We have, you know what?

Almost 12 million people here in the state of Ohio.

And I do believe that we're going to be able to come up with, 15, 15 and 15, and then whittle that down to five, five and five, five hours, five days and five independence.

I'm not concerned about that.

And I'm not concerned about the quality of citizen that is going to step forward.

This is going to be an opportunity unlike anything else we've ever had in Ohio for citizens to take charge of their government.

You know, we have a representative form of government, obviously, and we as citizens bestow our trust on the people that we elect.

And this legislature, has and some statewide office holders have time and time again thumbed their nose at the citizenry.

Did things that were contrary to the wishes of the people.

And then don't respect how the people voted, you know, and people are tired of it.

They are tired of it.

And this is a this is an opportunity.

The Republicans, most of those who oppose this are Republicans, including some elected officials.

They claim the amendment would require gerrymandering because of this proportionality formula.

If you are drawing lines to ensure a certain number of Republican districts, a certain number of Democratic districts.

Isn't that gerrymandering?

Well, the definition of gerrymandering, contains the word unfair to draw districts that are favorites of, you know, hours, days and a proportionality.

You know, I like to call it proportionality.

And it is the gerrymandering is doing that unfairly.

Okay.

And also there is no requirement that what you said 5743 or something like that.

Okay.

That's those are guidelines.

All right.

They're not.

Oh, you have to have you know that that proportion, that ratio.

What those guidelines will tell us is if the districts are drawn in such a way that it totally exceeds the 57% and thereby, you know, does not even approach the 43, that is an indicator that there's gerrymandering going on.

Okay.

So that to me is is the role of those, those numbers.

You look back six years.

Currently you look back ten years.

All right.

And but it's the same process of, identifying trends when you have citizens, voters who obviously declare based on their, you know, their primary participation.

Now, you know, I, I'm sure that your listeners know this, but, the vast majority of registered voters in Ohio are independent.

Okay.

I think over 70% are independents.

We always talk about hours and days like they're the, you know, the be all and end all as far as the control.

Well, yeah, because those are the folks that are elected.

And so there's a lot of independents that participate, I would presume, in the, you know, in the voting for either an red.

But there's so many, that feel they, they don't have a choice because of gerrymandering.

The no.

One campaign claims that out-of-state special interests want to create a commission that will have virtually unlimited power to spend Ohio's tax dollars with zero accountability to voters.

I want to ask you about that.

And I want to start with the idea of accountability.

That seems to be at the root of why previous votes to create an independent commission to do redistricting did not pass in 2005 and 2012.

So how do you address that concern about accountability when these commissioners are not elected officials?

Okay.

Every basis to your question is rooted in the opposition's, false narrative.

All right.

I want to start there.

They talk about accountability.

They talk about a blank check.

They talk about all this nonsense that if they read the Constitution, they would see the parts, the paragraphs in our proposed amendment that address exactly what you're saying.

Yes, there will be, a 15 member commission.

Now, as far as accountability, if someone is not doing their job, it says in the Constitution they can be removed from the commission.

All right.

And they're the people they're working with will be the ones that say, hey, you're missing meetings.

You're, you know, slacking off, and it's not fair.

And we're going to, you know, vote you off the island, so to speak.

And and that is right there in the Constitution.

So when they say there's no accountability, no way to get rid of them, they know they're lying.

All right.

And the next thing you talk about and oh, and by the way, they're only coming together to draw the maps.

They're not going to be operating for ten years.

You know, this is this is a very condensed period of time that they have to come up with a product.

And that product is a map for both the General Assembly and Congress.

So you know, people have to understand that this is not just about who's in Columbus represented, but who's in Washington.

And, so the bill have a condensed period of time by which they are required to have met milestones in the process of getting to the maps.

And when those maps are passed, and by the way, the whole process is transparent.

If you want to talk about accountability, there is none.

Now, there is no accountability under what we have currently in our Constitution.

This operation, there will not be a conversation that takes place between you know, the commissioners that is not in front of a camera that people can't live stream, that people can't, you know, attend.

Everything is going to be out in the open when they're drawing the maps.

The map makers will be doing this in front of a camera so you can turn it on, you know, and and if you have insomnia, it will probably be a cure.

I'm telling you.

But I'm just saying that this is absolute nonsense.

They know it's a lie.

For the accountability.

They know it's a lie when they talk about a blank check.

There is a process in the constitutional or the Constitution amendment, and it talks about what the appropriation will be by the legislature to pay for this.

Okay.

And there is a cap on it.

All right.

And yes, the commissioners will be paid when they are working per diem.

Okay.

Just like any other commission that is set up for any purpose here in the state of Ohio, commissioners get paid.

These commissioners will get on the lower rung of $125 a day.

All right.

Why did we put a pay?

Well, obviously, we want people that can afford to do this.

In other words, they're going to have a, a resource coming in.

All right.

I didn't want people who literally can sit back and say, yeah, I can do that because I don't need the money.

You know, I don't need an income.

I'm, you know, of a certain socioeconomic status that I can do this now because we want a, demographics that are representative of the state of Ohio.

That's also in the Constitution geographically.

And, for, demographics.

So, yeah, so basically, the people that are saying vote no are purposely, misleading line about these questions that you've asked.

If people would just read the amendment, they would see what I'm talking about.

I, you know, sat down and we drafted this and it took almost a year to come up with this.

And, you know, people who were, lawyers who were experts in the field of, of, representation, etc., both from within and outside of Ohio.

This was not a fly by night organization.

And it wasn't, you know, the Democratic Party knocking on my door and saying, hey, chief, have I got a job for you in your retirement?

Not at all.

Not at all.

I spoke about doing this as I was winding down from the court.

In fact, in the very first opinion that was authored by justice Melody Stewart, I wrote a concurring opinion, and I reminded the citizens of Ohio, we have this wonderful opportunity in Ohio that only about 16 or 17 other states have in effort to have citizens, propose an amendment to our Constitution.

Yes, it has to be proposed.

Yes, it has to be voted on by the citizens of the state.

Yes, they have to have the majority of yes votes.

Now, that could have changed by that goofy, amendment from August of last year, where the politicians tried to pull the rug out from underneath our, our citizens and bump that up to 60% approval rather than 50 plus one.

Nobody fell for that.

And you know, that's that's a testament to our citizens.

Absolutely.

I do want to ask you about the out-of-state claim, citizens, politicians raised $23 million as a fundraising reports in August.

Less than 16% of that came from Ohio.

That's a lot of money to be coming in from out of state for this effort.

Okay.

And I would like to remind everybody that these are maps that are being drawn not only for Columbus and the state of Ohio, but also for Congress in Washington, which affects our country, democracy that affects our country.

I like to say democracy does not stop at the borders of Ohio.

Strengthening our democracy, strengthening the voice of the citizens does not stop.

The interest in doing that does not stop at the border of Ohio with good cause.

What's good for Ohio, what's good for the people of Ohio was good for our government in Ohio is good for this country.

If this passes, how can voters ensure that what they apparently want, which would be these fairer districts, are more representative?

How can they be assured that this will happen?

Because a lot of voters think they voted for that in 2015, 2018.

And I would remind them, this is a citizens initiated thing.

This is not a group that has an agenda other than fair maps, representative maps, maps that reflect the citizens of Ohio.

And they're voting, you know, previously in that amendment, those amendments were drafted by people who had an agenda.

And that agenda was to put party over people, to have a supermajority, which they have.

And, just to, you know, exercise that authority with no regard.

To what the citizens want.

And there's example after example of the legislature thinking we know best and citizens, you know, you you better listen to us and we're going to put this constitutional amendment on, and we're going to fight against this constitutional amendment.

And what happens, you know, let's go back to August, when the citizens soundly rejected, you know, taking their, their right to vote for, a constitutional amendment literally away by making it 60% rather than 50 plus one.

What was the reaction of the politicians?

This isn't over.

We're going to bring it back.

Okay.

What?

You know, it's like somebody scolding children.

You just wait.

We're going to do this again.

And by golly, that's that's insulting to the people of Ohio.

And, the people understand that people in Ohio are smart.

How much of an effect do you expect?

The ballot boards language, the ballot summary that voters will see will affect their vote?

How much do you expect that?

You mean if legal, unconstitutional language that Frank Larose drafted that purposely tries to sway the voters to vote no on this amendment?

You mean that language?

Yeah, I think it's bad.

I think it's the worst ballot language I have ever seen in my career of 20 years on the Supreme Court and four years as lieutenant governor.

It's atrocious.

It's unconstitutional.

And quite frankly, I find it reprehensible that the secretary of state, the person who is supposed to oversee fair elections in this state, puts his thumb on the scale this way.

And that's what he does, because they want you to vote no.

They want you to look at that language, and they want you to say, ooh, I don't want that.

I'm going to vote no.

Let me give you an example.

The amendment says very clearly that what the commission will do will ban gerrymandering.

The intent of this amendment is to ban gerrymandering.

Frank la Rose and company has in the ballot language that they hope that citizens will see when they walk into the booth, or they're looking at the ballot at home, that this is what's written, that the commission will be required to gerrymander.

That's a lie.

That is a that I just can't tell you how false and dishonest and despicable.

And actually, it was signed off on by the Supreme Court, which people are shocked about.

Absolutely shocked about that.

So yes, it was it's difficult.

We expected bad ballot language.

Look what happened to the reproductive Rights Amendment.

They tried to put their thumb on the scale, for that, to have citizens vote against it.

Obviously, that didn't work.

And I think the same result will happen this time.

Citizens are offended, when they're taken for fools.

And that's what Frank LaRosa and the opposition is counting on, that people are fools.

And again, we'll have the no on issue one side next week.

And we'll recap both sides in a later show.

And that is it for this week for my colleagues at the Statehouse News Bureau of Ohio Public Media.

Thanks for watching.

Please check out our website at State News Dot or or find us online by searching the State of Ohio show.

You can also hear more from the Bureau on our podcast.

The Ohio Statehouse Group.

Look for it every Monday morning wherever you get your podcasts.

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

A.

Support for the Statehouse News Bureau comes from Medical Mutual, dedicated to the health and well-being of Ohioans, offering health insurance plans, as well as dental, vision and wellness programs to help people achieve their goals and remain healthy.

More at Med mutual.com.

The law offices of Porter, right, Morris and Arthur LLP.

Porter Wright is dedicated to bringing inspired legal outcomes to the Ohio business community.

More at porterwright.com.

Porter Wright inspired Every day in Ohio Education Association, representing 120,000 educators who are united in their mission to create the excellent public schools.

Every child deserves more at OHEA.org.