Redistricting is the redrawing of United States congressional districts. Reapportionment, on the other hand, is redrawing the districts for the Ohio General Assembly (or any state government). Reapportionment is what we're about to start dealing with here. There need to be 33 senate districts and 99 house districts which all have to have roughly the same number of people, and basically the democrats and the republicans try to draw the districts so that their own side gets as many definite easy-win seats as they can. It's a pretty unfair process, because whoever is in the minority tends to get screwed over because the majority helps themselves to as many districts as it can and passes the bill because they don't need the minority party's votes to get it passed. Districts tend to end up being drawn in really contorted, unnatural-looking shapes in order to give the districts the political distribution they want. In Ohio there are rules saying that you can't break up counties and cities unless it's absolutely necessary in an effort to make the reapportionment process more fair, but there are still ways to get around it and draw things unfairly. Then, because most of the districts are either a clear win for a Democrat or a clear win for a Republican, there isn't much competition in the election process, and the same representatives and senators run over and over again without much fear of a tough competitive election kicking them out unless they're running against another person from the same party.
This year i think reapportionment is supposed to officially start in August, but there are already groups meeting about it, looking at population data and election data, and i would imagine the members are hoping that their district will be drawn in a way that that will make sure they can get re-elected.
Redrawing districts is always an interesting discussion. Do you know how many seats Ohio is probably going to lose for the next election?
ReplyDeleteHmmm i'm not sure. They're doing reapportionment now, not redistricting, so they're just redrawing the districts for Ohio's general assembly which will always have 33 senate and 99 house districts. I don't know when they're redrawing for the US congress though.
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