Opinion ID: 6501056
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Comparisons focusing on urban counties

Text: {¶ 37} In Adams, __ Ohio St.3d __, 2022-Ohio-89, __ N.E.3d __, we also were persuaded by evidence showing that the original plan maximized the number of Republican-leaning districts by “cracking” and “packing” Democratic voters in several urban counties. Id. at ¶ 53-54, 58, 61. We noted substantial evidence showing that the original plan contained districts in Ohio’s three largest metropolitan areas that were shaped not by neutral political geography but by an effort to “pack” and “crack” Democratic voters—resulting in more districts in 15 SUPREME COURT OF OHIO which Republican candidates were strongly favored or at least competitive. Id. at ¶ 56-62. {¶ 38} Petitioners have presented similar evidence concerning the March 2 plan. With respect to the Cincinnati area, Dr. Imai concludes that the March 2 plan has no safe Democratic seat in Hamilton County. Dr. Imai compared the partisan vote share of the district that each precinct in Hamilton County is assigned to in the March 2 plan against the vote share of each precinct’s assigned district in each of the 5,000 simulated plans he created. His analysis shows that the simulated plans would expect voters in Cincinnati and a large area of northern Hamilton County to be included in a Democratic-leaning district. As shown in the map below, the March 2 plan draws a district line directly through the Democratic area, carving it into two districts—one of which, as in the original plan, connects Cincinnati to mostly rural Warren County through a narrow strip of land. As Dr. Imai explained, “in Hamilton County, the [March 2] plan turns one safe Democratic district into a toss-up district by cracking Democratic voters.” {¶ 39} Dr. Jowei Chen, an associate professor of political science at the University of Michigan who has published academic papers on legislative 16 January Term, 2022 redistricting and political geography, concluded that the districts in Hamilton County are outliers in terms of both compactness and partisanship. He found that the March 2 plan’s Cincinnati district has a higher Republican vote share than 84.2 percent of the simulated plans’ districts containing Cincinnati. The March 2 plan achieves this result by connecting Cincinnati to Warren County instead of adjacent areas in Hamilton County. Dr. Chen notes that the March 2 plan’s District 1 is less compact than the vast majority of simulated districts, having a lower Polsby-Popper score than 96.9 percent of the simulated districts containing Cincinnati. Dr. Imai reached a similar conclusion regarding the compactness of the March 2 plan’s District 1: it is far less compact than expected based on his simulated plans. {¶ 40} With respect to the Columbus area, Dr. Imai’s simulated plans would expect all of Franklin County and parts of Delaware County and Fairfield County to belong to Democratic-leaning districts. But according to Dr. Imai, the March 2 plan packs Democrats into District 3 and cracks the rest into other districts, including District 15—which encompasses downtown Columbus and stretches into Shelby County, as shown in the map below. 17 SUPREME COURT OF OHIO Dr. Imai concludes that this allowed the commission to create an additional Republican district beyond what would be expected. {¶ 41} Dr. Chen states that the two Columbus districts in the March 2 plan are more favorable to Republican candidates than the majority of those in his simulated plans: District 3 is more heavily Democratic than 89.6 percent of the simulated plans’ districts containing the most Columbus population, while District 15 is more heavily Republican than 99.4 percent of the simulated plans’ districts containing the second-highest Columbus population. Dr. Chen states that District 15 is also less compact than nearly every simulated district with the second-highest Columbus population. Dr. Imai similarly found District 15 to be far less compact than expected based on his simulated plans. Dr. Chen concludes that the two Columbus districts were engineered to create a more Republican-friendly outcome, achieved in part by sacrificing the compactness of District 15. {¶ 42} Finally, with respect to the Cleveland area, Dr. Chen concludes that the Cleveland-based district in the March 2 plan is more heavily Democratic than 98.8 percent of the simulated plans’ Cleveland-based districts, while the district with the second-highest Cuyahoga County population is more Republican than 100 percent of the simulated plans’ districts with the second-highest Cuyahoga County population. All of Dr. Chen’s simulated plans have one safe Democratic district based in Cleveland and a second competitive or Democratic-leaning district that includes parts of Cuyahoga County. In contrast, the March 2 plan packs Democrats into District 11, making District 7 safely Republican. Both districts, according to Dr. Chen, “are significantly less geographically compact than the vast majority of their geographically analogous districts in the simulated plans.” {¶ 43} Dr. Imai submitted an example plan (which was also submitted to the commission on February 22) showing a more compact treatment of all three of Ohio’s largest urban areas and containing six districts favoring Democrats. According to Dr. Imai, his example plan shows it is possible to apply Article XIX 18 January Term, 2022 of the Ohio Constitution to Ohio’s political geography without favoring the Republican Party to the degree the March 2 plan does. {¶ 44} In Adams, __ Ohio St.3d __, 2022-Ohio-89, __ N.E.3d __, at ¶ 62, we held that the original plan contained oddly shaped districts in each of Ohio’s three largest metropolitan areas and that the “inescapable conclusion” was that those districts were “the product of an effort to pack and crack Democratic voters.” As the above expert analyses demonstrate, those problems persist in the March 2 plan.