A coalition of civil rights groups including the Ohio NAACP, the Ohio Unity Coalition, the Ohio State Conference of the NAACP and the Ohio Organizing Collaborative today responded to Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine’s statements on the Citizens Not Politicians ballot measure. They released the following statement:

"This amendment is incredibly important because Ohio is still one of the 10 most gerrymandered states in our nation,” said Petee Talley, executive director of the Ohio Unity Coalition. “In 2022, residents in several communities were gerrymandered into districts to dilute their voting power. One such gerrymandered in Toledo, Ohio, resulted in roughly 38,000 black citizens in SD11 in Lucas County being disenfranchised. The best way to make the districting process fairer is to get politicians out of it, so they can’t stack the deck in their favor just to gain and keep power.”

“We need fair state legislative maps to give Black Communities a fair chance  for our voices to be heard and remove the gerrymandering  that  has silenced our voices,” said Tom Roberts, president, Ohio Conference of Branches of the NAACP. “Fair maps give Black communities the power to chose representatives that speak to our interest concerning jobs, justice, education, health care, and safety. The NAACP has fought for years to end all practices that place a ceiling on the hopes, dreams, and abilities of Black Communities.”

“The certification of this amendment is a historic step towards restoring fairness in Ohio’s electoral process,” said Bria Bennett, communications director, Ohio Organizing Collaborative. “This initiative is a clear, bipartisan effort to remove politicians from the redistricting process and replace them with an independent citizens commission. The amendment will eliminate favoritism and discrimination in district drawing and represents one of the most widely supported citizen-initiated constitutional amendments in Ohio's history. We are confident that Ohio voters will see the importance of this measure and end gerrymandering.”

Governor DeWine is trying to tip the scale by being disingenuous with Ohio Voters on the redistricting ballot initiative,” said Deidra Reese, director of voter engagement for the Ohio Organizing Collaborative. “This proposal, initiated by Ohio voters, is in direct response to politicians ignoring the will of the people after they passed previous constitutional amendments with clear criteria for what they wanted done. DeWine says he is leading as a governor should. But he capitulated during the redistricting process and voted to give us badly gerrymandered districts that we are living under currently.”