Ohio voters reject replacing troubled mapmaking system with citizen-led redistricting commission

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Ohio voters reject replacing troubled mapmaking system with citizen-led redistricting commission

2024-11-06 13:58 Last Updated At：14:01

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Ohio voters rejected a constitutional amendment Tuesday that would have established a citizen-led redistricting commission to replace an existing mapmaking system that repeatedly produced unconstitutional maps.

The outcome marked a defeat for the group Citizens Not Politicians, a bipartisan coalition that proposed Issue 1 as an alternative after seven straight sets of legislative and congressional maps produced under the existing setup were found to be unconstitutionally gerrymandered to favor Republicans.

Proponents believe they were stymied by the approved ballot language, which described the new commission as being “required to gerrymander” district boundaries — though the amendment stated the opposite was the case.

The campaign sued the GOP-controlled Ohio Ballot Board over it, telling the Ohio Supreme Court it may have been “the most biased, inaccurate, deceptive, and unconstitutional” language the state has ever seen. The court’s Republican majority voted 4-3 to let the wording stand.

"In analyzing the vote tonight, it is clear that the millions of Ohioans who voted yes want to end gerrymandering," former Ohio Chief Justice Maureen O'Connor, a leading force behind the campaign, said in a statement. "And it is also clear that those who voted no thought that they were voting to end gerrymandering.”

She said the coalition's work this year "laid a powerful foundation" and that redistricting reformers "will continue to push for an Ohio where every vote truly counts and where transparency and fairness guide our electoral process.”

The well-financed campaign also faced opposition from GOP officials, including Gov. Mike DeWine and legislative leaders, who argued that the new commission was flawed and unaccountable. DeWine has vowed to pursue his own alternative next year.

Former President Donald Trump, who won the state for the third time Tuesday, also appeared in ads urging Ohioans to vote against the measure.

Ohio Senate President Matt Huffman said voters protected their state over outside interest groups that financially supported Issue 1.

“Voters recognized that establishing an unelected, unaccountable fourth branch of government under Issue 1 was a very bad idea,” he said in a statement. “Ohio voters protected their power and their voice by defeating a well financed and secretly funded attack on democracy.”

Legislative Democrats blasted the process Tuesday.

“Power-hungry Republican politicians deceived voters, put deceptive language on the ballot, and outright lied to keep a grasp on their artificial legislative supermajorities,” Senate Democratic Leader Nickie Antonio said in a statement. “While I am devastated by this loss, I will continue to fight for fair maps alongside the many Ohioans — Republicans, independents, and Democrats alike — who demand better from our state government. The fight for fair maps is far from over.”

The governor contended that the mapmaking rules laid out in Issue 1 would divide communities and mandate outcomes that fit “the classic definition of gerrymandering.” He took specific aim at the proposal’s requirement for partisan proportionality in the maps.

DeWine said Iowa’s system — in which mapmakers are prohibited from consulting past election results or protecting individual lawmakers — would remove politics from the process.

Issue 1 supporters disagreed, pointing out that Iowa state lawmakers have the final say on political district maps in that state — the exact scenario their plan was designed to avoid. Maureen O’Connor, the retired Ohio chief justice who championed Issue 1, accused DeWine of spreading disinformation about the ballot measure.

The fall ballot proposal called for replacing the Ohio Redistricting Commission, made up of the governor, auditor, secretary of state and the four legislative leaders, with an independent body made up of ordinary citizens. The new panel’s members would have been diversified by party affiliation and geography.

In a statement, the Ohio Chamber of Commerce said it was pleased that voters recognized the consequences of Issue 1 and rejected it.

“We agree that the current redistricting system is flawed,” the business group said. “However, this constitutional amendment would have only created larger problems, like raising the cost of doing business in our state and making us less economically competitive.”

The chamber pledged to work with state legislators and elected officials on “the right solution for all.”

Trump flips Georgia and moves closer to reclaiming the White House

2024-11-06 13:58 Last Updated At：14:00

WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump has won the battleground state of Georgia, the onetime Republican stronghold that had voted for Democrats four years ago.

With his earlier win in North Carolina, Trump narrowed Kamala Harris’ pathways to victory and expanded his routes to reaching the 270 electoral votes needed to become the next president.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump won the battleground state of North Carolina on Tuesday, fending off a challenge from Kamala Harris, who was looking to flip the state and expand her pathways to 270 electoral votes.

The former Republican president had made stops to the state in each of the last three days of the campaign to deprive Harris of the pickup.

The Democratic vice president’s campaign chair, Jen O’Malley Dillon, told staff in a memo after polls closed that the “blue wall” of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin was now the Democrat’s “clearest path” to victory, according to a copy obtained by The Associated Press.

Polls were closed in additional battlegrounds — Georgia, Arizona and Nevada — but the results in all remaining swing states were too early to call.

Trump won Florida, a one-time battleground that has shifted heavily to Republicans in recent elections. He also notched early wins in reliably Republican states such as Texas, South Carolina and Indiana. Harris won Virginia, a state Trump visited in the final days of the campaign, and took Democratic strongholds like New York, New Mexico and California. Harris also won an Electoral College vote in Nebraska that was contested by Republicans.

The crowd at Harris’ watch party at her alma mater, Howard University in Washington, began to file out after midnight Wednesday. Harris did not speak at the party. Cedric Richmond, co-chair of the Harris campaign, spoke instead, telling the crowd there were still votes to count and states to be called.

“We will continue overnight to fight to make sure that every vote is counted. That every voice has spoken,” he said. “So you won’t hear from the vice president tonight, but you will hear from her tomorrow. She will be back here tomorrow.”

Trump was expected to speak early Wednesday from an event in Florida.

The Trump campaign bet that it would cut into Democrats' traditional strength with Black and Latino voters, with the former president going on male-centric podcasts and making explicit racial appeals to both groups. Nationally, Black and Latino voters appeared slightly less likely to support Harris than they were to back Joe Biden four years ago, and Trump’s support among those voters appeared to rise slightly compared to 2020, according to AP VoteCast.

The fate of democracy appeared to be a primary driver for Harris’ supporters, a sign that the Democratic nominee’s persistent messaging in her campaign’s closing days accusing Trump of being a fascist may have broken through, according to the expansive survey of more than 110,000 voters nationwide. It also found a country mired in negativity and desperate for change. Trump’s supporters were largely focused on immigration and inflation — two issues that the former Republican president has been hammering since the start of his campaign.

In his recent visits to North Carolina, Trump seized on the heavy damage caused Hurricane Helene, spreading false claims about the federal government’s response and using GoFundMe to collect millions in donations for impacted residents. Trump initially trumpeted the Republican nominee for governor, Mark Robinson, and hailed him as “Martin Luther King on steroids,” but distanced himself after a CNN report that alleged Robinson had made explicit racial and sexual posts on a pornography website’s message board more than a decade ago.

Robinson, who lost his race Tuesday to Democratic Attorney General Josh Stein, denied writing the messages and sued CNN for defamation last month.

In another positive sign for the GOP, the party took control of the Senate, with Trump-backed Bernie Moreno flipping a seat in Ohio held by Democrat Sherrod Brown since 2007. They picked up another when Republican Jim Justice won a West Virginia seat that opened up with Sen. Joe Manchin’s retirement.

Those casting Election Day ballots mostly encountered a smooth process, with isolated reports of hiccups that regularly happen, including long lines, technical issues and ballot printing errors. Federal election security officials said there were minor disruptions throughout the day but there was no evidence of any impact to the election system. Officials determined that bomb threats that were reported in multiple states were all not credible and did not impact the ability of voters to cast their ballots.

Harris, 60, would be the first woman, Black woman and person of South Asian descent to serve as president. She also would be the first sitting vice president to win the White House in 36 years.

Trump, 78, would be the oldest president ever elected. He would also be the first defeated president in 132 years to win another term in the White House, and the first person convicted of a felony to take over the Oval Office.

He survived one assassination attempt by millimeters at a July rally. Secret Service agents foiled a second attempt in September.

Harris, pointing to the warnings of Trump's former aides, has labeled him a “fascist” and blamed Trump for putting women's lives in danger by nominating three of the justices who overturned Roe v. Wade. In the closing hours of the campaign, she tried to strike a more positive tone and went all of Monday without saying her Republican opponent's name.

Voters nationwide also were deciding thousands of other races that will decide everything from control of Congress to state ballot measures on abortion access in response to the Supreme Court’s vote in 2022 to overturn Roe v. Wade.

In Florida, a ballot measure that would have protected abortion rights in the state constitution failed after not meeting the 60% threshold to pass, marking the first time a measure protecting abortion rights failed since Roe was overturned. Earlier Tuesday, Trump refused to say how he voted on the measure and snapped at a reporter, saying, “You should stop talking about that."

In reliably Democratic New York, Colorado and Maryland, voters approved ballot measures aimed at protecting abortion rights in their state constitutions.

Associated Press writers Jill Colvin in Palm Beach, Florida, Darlene Superville and Eric Tucker in Washington, Manuel Valdes in Las Vegas and Marc Levy in Allentown, Pennsylvania, contributed to this report.