TOLEDO, Ohio — Legislative candidates in northwest Ohio are speaking out about their removal from May's primary election, following months of redistricting woes in the state.
The Ohio Supreme Court has so far rejected three sets of Ohio House and Ohio Senate maps drawn by the state's redistricting panel.
"It's not just frustrating for candidates, it's frustrating for voters. You know, we don't know what districts we're living in, or which candidates are running, or even when the primary will be," Toledo City Councilwoman Michele Grim said.
The Lucas County Board of Elections printed off sample ballots for the May primary, but with legislative districts still undecided, voters won't see state representatives or senatorial candidates on them.
Grim called it an ugly side of politics.
"This is a corrupt power grab by Republican politicians. The Ohio Constitution requires fair maps, Ohio voters demanded fair maps and Republicans in Columbus don't want fair maps and they don't want a fair election," Grim said.
But, she isn't the only one frustrated.
Daniel Ortiz is a candidate for state representative, and he said with the continued redistricting woes, campaigning has become more challenging, saying he doesn't even know who's in his district.
"You know, I might think I can go knock on doors — I live in the Old West End, obviously the Old West End is going to be in my district — but even one of the proposed maps cut the Old West End in half right by my house on Delaware," he said. "So, I might go knock on doors in my neighborhood and talk to someone who's a block away and they might not be in my district."
Ortiz said for grassroots candidates like himself, working with larger campaigns is important. But now that he's out of this primary, it's made campaigning that much harder.
"We'd be able to combine our campaigns, combine our resources, we'd be able to knock doors with each other, for each other at the same time, and right now we're kind of knocked out of doing all of that because we don't even know where to go to knock doors," Ortiz said.
Ortiz said that primary elections already struggle to get voters. But now, if they have two smaller elections at different times, he expects very low turnout for both primaries.