TOLEDO, Ohio — Many northwest Ohio voters are likely to find that they live in a new Congressional district this Election Day.
After the 2020 Census, Ohio's population loss meant that the state lost one seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.
And thanks to a change to the state's constitution that came from a 2018 anti-gerrymandering ballot initiative, Ohio officials used a new method to redraw the state's now-15 Congressional districts for the first time this year.
Even though the resulting map is under court challenge, Ohio will use the map in this year's election. And changes to the Congressional districts in our region mean that large portions of Lucas, Ottawa, Erie, Sandusky, Fulton, Seneca, Huron, Williams and Defiance counties now live in a different district than the last time voters there cast a ballot for U.S. House of Representatives.
There are dramatic changes to Ohio's 9th district, which used to be known as the "snake on the lake" for the way it narrowly wound along the Lake Erie shoreline as far east as Cleveland. The district now encompasses all of Lucas, Ottawa, Sandusky, Erie, Fulton and Defiance counties.
Similarly, Ohio's 5th district has changed a great deal as it now stretches further east, taking in Seneca and Huron counties.
Ohio's 4th district used to include all of Seneca and Sandusky counties, as well as much of Erie county. But the newly redrawn district now is mainly south of the Toledo region, taking in just a portion of Wyandot County.
Democratic and voting-rights groups won court cases against five Statehouse maps and two U.S. House maps. Nationwide, these maps are required to be redrawn to reflect population changes in the 2020 Census. The Ohio Supreme Court rejected the state’s maps as unduly gerrymandered to favor the ruling Republican party.
However, amid months of legal and policy wrangling, the 2022 legislative and congressional primaries ended up going forward using those same invalidated maps. The latest Congressional map delivered two-thirds of Ohio’s 16 seats to Republicans, although the state’s party breakdown over the past 10 years was roughly 54% Republican, 46% Democrat.
Even as the court fight over whether the maps are constitutional continues, Ohio will use the new map to elect members of the U.S. House in the Nov. 8 election.
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