What led to Ohio's newest set of district maps?

COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) -- Ohio has new legislative maps, but they're not the ones many expected after several changes were made in the process to draw the fourth set of maps.

These maps outline the districts when it comes to representation at the Ohio Statehouse.

The Ohio Redistricting Commission hired new, independent mapmakers to be part of the map-drawing process and they started building maps from scratch.

In the end, after hours of work that, is not what the commission adopted Monday night.

“I was shocked — to have a change, a complete change was — we didn’t have any notification, any idea that would take place,” said Ohio Sen. Vernon Sykes (D-Akron), co-chairman of the commission.

Jen Miller with the League of Women Voters Ohio said she felt like the commission was on its way to constitutional maps.

“At the last minute, they pulled the rug out from underneath us,” she said. “Instead of really working with the independent mappers to get the process done, they did this bait and switch.”

The maps, which were adopted in a 4-3 vote, are revised versions of the third set of Ohio Senate and House of Representatives maps, which were previously rejected by the Ohio Supreme Court.

“We had a deadline to produce a new map,” said House Speaker Robert Cupp (R-Lima), co-chairman of the commission. “We decided to amend one that the commission was already familiar with since it had passed it a month ago and to be able to timely meet the courts order. They were very explicit about no extensions for time, and they were very explicit on getting it done on time.”

The commission filing said the maps would give a 54-45 Republican advantage in the House and an 18-15 advantage in the Senate.

But Democrats said those numbers don't tell the full story.

Democrats said almost half their seats in the legislature would be competitive races -- where the Democrat is favored to win with 52 percent or less of the vote, and claim none of the Republican seats would be considered a toss-up.

House Minority Leader Rep. Allison Russo, a member of the commission, said the process with the mapmakers and livestreaming their work was supposed to improve transparency.

“Unfortunately, the Republican commissioners undermined that completely by shutting that process down instead going with… a very minimally changed map, unconstitutional map from the previous process,” Russo said.

Also under scrutiny, the commission hired and paid two mapmakers.

Each mapmaker was paid $49,000 for their work only to see it ultimately ditched by the commission.

“It was a very expensive process,” Cupp said. “This was something that the Supreme Court essentially ordered us to do, or very strongly said we had to do, so it was completely out of our discretion. It was, I think, a helpful process, maybe, for the public to understand how complicated and difficult it is.”

Sykes expects to hear something from the courts when it comes to the commission's adopted plan.

“We’re hopeful that they might still be considered in this process,” he said talking about the maps produced by independent mapmakers. “Of course, they’re (the court) deliberating, and we don’t know what avenues they’re about to take.”

There is a federal case involving the legislative maps, with Republicans asking the court to implement the third set of maps, set for a hearing Wednesday.

As far as the contested U.S. House of Representatives map, votes cast in that race for the primary will likely be counted. A case announcement released by the Ohio Supreme Court Tuesday shows the case would likely not be heard by the court until late May, well past the May 3 primary. In fact, the announcement gives both sides and any other petitioners 62 days from March 29 to make any court filings.

"There is no reason to expedite this case. At this juncture, it is abundantly clear that this case will not be litigated prior to the 2022 primary election," the court wrote in its announcement.

Last week, Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose ordered the state's 88 county boards of elections to prepare ballots for the primary, leaving out statehouse races, but including U.S. House races, even though the case is still pending. In his order, LaRose wrote that should the U.S. House districts be stricken by the court, votes cast in those primary races would not be counted and a second election would be held at a later date.