‌‌‌‌‌Ohio Supreme Court Puts Foot Down On Gerrymandering

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Hello readers!

Big surprise: No movement on federal voting rights legislation. Absent any substantive developments on that front this week, we return to the real action: the states. Starting with some notably fiery writing from the Ohio Supreme Court, which dashed Republicans’ gerrymandering hopes. 

Got a voting rights story you think our readers should hear? Chime in on The Hive. You can also respond to this email and tell me about it.
 

Alright, let’s dig in.

Ohio’s Top Court Has Had Enough

Perhaps the most impactful story this week in voting rights comes from the Ohio Supreme Court, which struck down extremely gerrymandered maps on both the state legislative and U.S. congressional levels. 

The court — with Republican Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor siding with the court’s Democrats — dug into maps drawn by Republicans, not only finding them to be illegally gerrymandered and ordering replacements, but also urging Ohio voters to consider alternative ways of drawing their districts.

“Readers should understand they have the power to again amend the Ohio Constitution to ensure that partisan politics is removed from the drawing of Ohio Senate and House districts that takes place every ten years,” O’Connor wrote in her concurring opinion on the state legislative maps case, pointing to several states that use independent redistricting commissions to draw maps. Currently, a commission dominated by Republicans draws the state maps, and the state legislature, governed by a Republican majority, draws the congressional maps.

Notably, the court referred often to the will of Ohio voters, who in a 2015 constitutional amendment said districts should be drawn to reflect the partisan preferences of the voters. When the partisan redistricting commissions failed to do that, the court stepped in. 

You Should Know This About The North Carolina Supreme Court

As in Ohio, Republicans in North Carolina gerrymandered their state and U.S. congressional maps — something three judges on a state court acknowledged while still finding that the maps were not unconstitutional. So, voting rights groups appealed to the state Supreme Court, which has a slim liberal majority and will hear the case next month. 
 

Here’s something interesting about the state’s Supreme Court: One justice, Phil Berger Jr., is the son of Phil Berger Sr., president pro tem of the North Carolina Senate and a defendant in the suit that the Supreme Court will be considering.

Obvious conflict of interest, right? Maybe, but the court recently issued a significant decision on conflicts of interest. Rather than the voting on whether a judge has a conflict, the court will let the justice in question decide for themselves whether to recuse. Thus, Berger will be allowed to decide whether his familial relationship with a defendant is a conflict. So far, he hasn’t announced any recusal.

The decision on recusals came only after a pressure campaign from a former state GOP chair — hinging on a threat from the legislature to impeach two liberal justices. It’s an amazing story reported by Facing South. Read it here.

Around The States

PENNSYLVANIA Republicans are considering a bill that would give them ultimate authority to draw their own legislative districts. 

TENNESSEE Republicans are planning to split up the Nashville congressional district in hopes of taking Rep. Jim Cooper’s (D-TN) seat.

A county judge in WISCONSIN ruled from the bench that “there is no specific authorization for drop boxes” for absentee ballots — sending county clerks scrambling to rewrite their instructions for voters. 

TEXAS’ new voting restrictions have resulted in hundreds of rejected mail-in ballot applications, including half of the applications in Travis County, home to Austin. 

Correction: Last week’s Franchise incorrectly referred to the state of which Jay Inslee is governor. He is the governor of Washington. 

The Latest In Election Sabotage

At least eight secretary of state candidates running in 2022 count themselves as part of a “coalition of America First secretary of state candidates,” one of them told The Guardian.
 

WISCONSIN Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R) was deposed by lawyers from American Oversight, who are seeking records related to the partisan 2020 election investigation ongoing in the state. 

A state grand jury is investigating Tina Peters, the Mesa County, COLORADO clerk thought to be involved in a leak of sensitive election information, and who had her home raided by the FBI a few weeks ago. Also, Peters announced her reelection campaign. 

This FLORIDA Republican lost a special congressional race by nearly 60 points. But he won’t concede. 

MICHIGAN’s largest pro-Trump county did a “forensic audit” of the 2020 vote and found… nothing wrong. 

Politico: What Democrats put in their voting rights megabill — and what got left out

NY Times: You Can’t Judge a District Just by Looking at It

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