If there’s one word Ohioans are probably tired of hearing, it’s gerrymandering. After years of failed and unsuccessful reform efforts, the state remains gerrymandered, with no end in sight.
After the Ohio Redistricting Commission unanimously passed a 12-3 map in October 2025, Common Cause summed up the process by saying: “If all this sounds depressing, well, it is — at least for now.”
But the organization added an important reminder: “One thing you can say about redistricting advocates in Ohio: we don’t give up easily!”
It can be hard not to want to give up in the current political environment.
With the mid-decade redistricting wars raging on in states around the country, the U.S. Supreme Court continuing to reshape the law governing partisan gerrymandering, and voters increasingly frustrated with a political system that feels rigged against them, some may conclude that the war is over and voters lost.
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The maps being used in Ohio for the 2026 midterms are set (unless maybe Trump calls one of the Republican legislative leaders and tells them he’s entitled to more seats here).
But this stage of the redistricting wars is better viewed as half-time at a sporting event rather than the end of the game; we may not like the score, but we still have time to regroup and adjust strategies that aren’t working.
Hindsight may be 20/20, but when it comes to redistricting, perhaps we need 20/30 vision. That’s because 2030 is the year that the next Census that determines congressional and state legislative apportionment will take place.
Although much conversation has centered around the mid-decade redistricting wars of the past year, Republicans’ previous REDMAP (Redistricting Majority Project) shows why looking ahead matters.
By targeting state legislative races in 2010, Republicans were able to influence who would control redistricting after the 2010 Census, and in turn, secure lasting majorities for themselves.
A July 2009 OpEd in the New York Times stated: “2010 is not just any election years: it is crucial given that this class of governors will be in charge as their states draw Congressional and state legislative districts as part of the reapportionment process after the next census. And given historical trends in midterm elections… the possibility (is) that Republicans could make gains in House races next year.”
Ohioans frustrated with the gerrymandered supermajority Statehouse now have an opportunity to think about the inverse; although four years is a lifetime in politics, it is enough time to play the long game on gerrymandering.
That means paying attention not only to the 2026 elections, but to the statewide races that will determine who has a seat at the table when Ohio redraws its maps after the 2030 Census.
If reform advocates want different results, they will need to think strategically about the elections that determine who draws the lines — and what those officials are willing to do with that power.
Ohio’s Redistricting Commission may be unpopular in practice, but its composition still matters.
Democrats have not won a statewide executive office in Ohio since Ted Strickland was elected governor in 2006, but many Democrats are hopeful that the current political environment will produce a political shift significant enough to break the Republican supermajority.
Current polling confirms this is a realistic possibility. Similarly, a recent Axios headline declared, “Reliably red Ohio suddenly a red-hot mess for GOP.”
What actually happens on Election Day remains to be seen. But the larger point is that the next redistricting battle is already taking shape, even if voters aren’t thinking about it yet.
In our forthcoming book, Draw the Line in Ohio: How One State’s Fight for Fair Maps Explains Gerrymandering in America, my co-author, Josh Rultenberg, and I chronicle the state’s long battles over redistricting reform. While that involves many ups and downs (and more of the latter for reform advocates), we want to drive home an important point: “The most powerful person in any state isn’t one of its elected leaders. It’s an engaged, informed citizen who refuses to look away.”
The redistricting wars, in Ohio and elsewhere, won’t end after the midterms. That gives Ohio a unique opportunity to become something different: a laboratory of democracy. Justice Louis Brandeis famously described state governments this way, as places where new ideas could be tested before being adopted more broadly. But as democratic candidate for lieutenant governor David Pepper has pointed out, Ohio has increasingly become something closer to a laboratory of autocracy, largely because of its gerrymandered districts.
In listening to Ohio voters, one thing has become clear. They are tired of the redistricting fights and are willing to experiment with new ideas. The idea of an independent redistricting commission failed, but the failure of previous reforms does not mean that the state should stop looking for better answers.
Hindsight may be 20/20. But if we want better representation in the 2030s and beyond, we need 20/30 vision now.
Rory Riley Topping is an attorney, legal analyst, and former congressional staffer who has served in all three branches of the federal government. She is the co-author of the forthcoming book “Draw the Line in Ohio: How One State’s Fight for Fair Maps Explains Gerrymandering in America,” which examines Ohio’s redistricting battles and what they reveal about gerrymandering nationally. Her writing has appeared in The Hill, The Washington Examiner, The Pragmatic Papers, and other publications.
This story is republished from the Ohio Capital Journal under a Creative Commons license. View the original article.
