Our testimony against rigged maps
Blog | October 30, 2025
Our Communications Director Gabriel Mann testified against unfair, rigged congressional maps during this hearing of the Ohio Redistricting Commission on October 30, 2025.
10/31/25 Update: The Ohio Redistricting Commission voted to approve a map. Our statement is on our Press Release page.
Gabriel Mann, Communications Director
Ohio Redistricting Commission
October 30, 2025
Co-Chairs Antonio, Stewart, and members of the Redistricting Commission, 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 Ohio Citizens’ Redistricting Commission-drawn map that the Equal Districts coalition re-submitted.
I’d like to start by asking a simple question: What are we doing here? We are 24 hours away from the constitutionally mandated deadline and we still haven’t seen a map proposal. On top of that, it’s Trick or Treat night, which means that you’re holding an important public hearing that impacts families at the exact hour when many parents across Ohio are committed to spending this time with their children in a treasured tradition. Cutting families out of the legislative process as you sit here and consider maps that cut families out of our democracy is unacceptable.
Ohio families deserve and need representation in government, and this process has shown exactly how much legislators in Ohio want to rule us, not represent us. This is not the time for you to try to make up for the fact that you’ve been ignoring constitutionally required deadlines.
In 2023, we saw a clear example of why gerrymandered districts fail to represent the views of the voters that 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. 55% of those voted for the Republican candidate for president. 44% percent of them voted for the Democrat. 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 outraged that this hearing is the first and likely only opportunity for testimony before the second deadline in this redistricting process. I’m also highly appalled that the public has been completely cut out of this process. Back-room meetings outside the public view are not how to draw maps. Leadership means coming together and doing what is right for the people you serve.
President Trump has dictated to his supporters that they should do whatever they can to rig the election to favor Republicans in 2026 and beyond. States like Texas have followed that edict and once again taken away the voices of the people that leaders are supposed to represent. Ohio cannot and should not follow that trend and further rig our already gerrymandered congressional districts. This process should not be about which party wins or loses. It should be about ensuring that voters win; that the voices of the people are heard in our government, and Ohioans have elected officials that will actually represent the needs of their community.
The map submitted by the Democrats and the Ohio Citizens’ Redistricting Commission 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 tomorrow’s deadline 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.
