Redistricting testimony
Blog | September 23, 2025
On September 22, 2025, Abortion Forward Communications Director Gabriel Mann testified against the Republican plan to redraw Ohio’s congressional districts.
Before he read his prepared remarks, Gabriel added some clarifying notes for the committee in response to misinformation heard earlier in the hearing:
Thank you, Madam Chair. There is a deadline!
The Ohio Constitution, Article XIX, Section 1 (D)
“Not later than the last day of September of the year after the year in which a plan expires under division (C)(3)(e) of this section, the general assembly shall pass a congressional district plan in the form of a bill by the affirmative vote of three-fifths of the members of each house of the general assembly, including the affirmative vote of at least one-half of the members of each of the two largest political parties represented in that house. A congressional district plan that is passed under this division and becomes law shall remain effective until the next year ending in the numeral one, except as provided in Section 3 of this article.”
These are rules Speaker Matt Huffman helped write and sponsored in a bill that is now codified into our state constitution!
The Republican-led ballot board did write the ballot language in 2024, just like they did in 2023. Secretary LaRose abused that privilege both times.
Gerrymandering also impacts statewide races.
There’s been so many people in this hearing reading dictionary definitions of gerrymandering, but nowhere near enough discussing the fact that you all are making government worse.
It’s gerrymandering when you produce bad policies that hurt people.
It’s gerrymandering when you lock in elections before voters get to vote.
It’s gerrymandering when those elected officials don’t listen to voters because they weren’t picked by voters.
I’m here to illustrate one specific bad outcome that is a direct result of a broken redistricting process, because our current maps our gerrymandered.
Gabriel’s prepared testimony, as written by our Deputy Director, Jaime Miracle:
Gabriel Mann, Communications Director
Joint Committee on Congressional Redistricting
September 22, 2025
Co-Chairs Timkin & Bird and members of the Joint Committee on Congressional Redistricting, thank you for accepting my testimony today. My name is Gabriel Mann, and I am the communications director for Abortion Forward, formerly Pro-Choice Ohio. I am here today urging you to pass a congressional district map that represents the people of Ohio, like the maps submitted by the Senate Democrats or the OCRC-drawn map that the Equal Districts coalition re-submitted.
In 2023, we saw a clear example of why gerrymandered districts fail to represent the views of the voters’ elected officials are supposed to be representing. Fifty-seven percent of the voters that cast ballots in November 2023 voted in favor of the Ohio Reproductive Freedom Amendment, enshrining the right to abortion and other reproductive health care services in the Ohio Constitution. Why did the voters have to do that? Because for over a decade the gerrymandered Ohio Legislature had been going against their will enacting more than 30 bans and restrictions on abortion. Not only did voters have to go to the ballot, collecting hundreds of thousands of signatures, to get the measure qualified to appear on the ballot, but the same voters had to come out and vote in a special election just months before the November election to fight back a legislatively created constitutional amendment solely focused on making the November election impossible to win. This gerrymandered Ohio Legislature has one goal: rigging the process in their favor because they cannot win based on the merits of their arguments. You know the policies you are passing do not represent the will of the people, you read the same polling I do.
In 2024, 5.8 million Ohioans came out to vote in the November general election. Fifty-five percent of those voted for the Republican candidate for president. Forty-four percent of them voted for the Democratic candidate for president. A representative map for Ohio should be one that comes close to those numbers, giving Ohioans from both parties the representation that matches the state composition. Our current congressional map gives Ohioans 10 Republican and 5 Democratic seats in congress, a 67% to 33% breakdown far from the representational number of 55% to 45%.
In the United States, we have a representative democracy—the people elect individuals to represent the needs of our communities in government. Unfortunately, states like Ohio have strayed from this foundational principle, creating district boundaries not based upon representation, but biased to a single party to win elections. The very foundation of our democracy is at risk when the people of our state no longer have true representation from their elected officials.
I am disappointed that this hearing is the first and likely only hearing before the first deadline in this redistricting process. We have not yet even seen a proposed map from the Republican leaders in the legislature. Leaders are making no attempt to work in a bipartisan manner to do what is best for Ohio, which would be to pass representational bipartisan maps before the September 30th deadline.
The map submitted by the Democrats and the OCRC drawn map re-submitted by the Equal Districts Coalition both meet both the spirit and the letter of the 2018 voter-approved constitutional reform. We encourage this committee and the legislature to adopt one of these maps for bipartisan passage before September 30th to give Ohioans what they deserve: a representative democracy where the voices and needs of their communities are heard.
Ohioans deserve true representation in our government. When we don’t get good maps, Ohioans lose, communities lose.
