For more than a year now - even Wednesday - Governor DeWine's stance on redistricting has been the same.

"I believe that we must put an end to gerrymandering once and for all in Ohio," he said in a press conference Wednesday morning, adding that voters should have a system they have more confidence in.

"The only way to do this is to take politics completely out of the drawing of the maps," said DeWine.

A citizen-led proposal Ohioans will vote on in November aims to do just that.
Under the 'Citizens Not Politicians' amendment, a 15-member citizen redistricting commission would control the mapmaking process
It got nearly double the required 413,000 signatures to appear on the ballot.
Nevertheless...

"If this ballot proposal were to be adopted, Ohio would actually end up with a system that mandates...that compels map drawers to produce gerrymandered districts," DeWine argued.

He pledged Wednesday to fight the proposal.
If it does win in November, he says he'll work with lawmakers - from already gerrymandered districts - to come up with a measure of their own based on the so-called 'Iowa Plan'.

"Map drawers are, under the Iowa Plan, prohibited...from looking at past voting patterns," said DeWine.

But while a nonpartisan agency would draft an initial plan, lawmakers would ultimately draw whatever maps they want if they don't like the first two plans.
An apparent about-face from DeWine, who repeatedly has said the current system doesn't work.

DeWine's comments sparked immediate and fierce backlash from Ohio Democrats.

State Rep Lauren McNally from Youngstown issued the following statement:

"Politicians like Governor DeWine just can't take a hint. Ohioans do not trust him. As a member of the Redistricting Commission, he supported maps that favored his political party and gave them unchecked power, resulting in an extreme state government that's completely out of touch with the people living here. Now he's asking Ohioans to trust those same politicians to come back to the drawing board with yet another process that politicians would still control. More than 700K Ohioans signed their names to a petition to put Citizens Not Politicians on the ballot. His speech could not be more condescending," said Rep. McNally.

"These supermajorities make it hard for Republicans to hear anything other than the sound of their own voices, because right now they don't have to. That's exactly what Ohioans want to stop. At the ballot box, more than once and by huge margins, Ohioans told them they care about proportionality. They told them they care about how partisan makeup influences the drawing of districts. When Governor DeWine and his accomplices ignored that and shoved their gerrymandered, unconstitutional maps down Ohioans throats, he lost any credibility on our perceptions on this subject. Let's be clear - DeWine and the Republican Party want to continue as is. This is their agenda and it's a very, very political one.

Ohioans are taking the power back. We saw it with the results of the August special election, another GOP manufactured power grab meant to silence the will of voters, and again in November when Ohioans reclaimed the power over their own bodies. Ohioans won't be fooled by this latest scheme."

The Ohio Democratic Party released the following statement:

"Today, Governor DeWine endorsed a redistricting plan similar to the one in Iowa, where politicians have the final say.

It's a sudden switch coming from a governor who previously said that he would be 'very happy not to be involved in the future' and said today that we should remove politics from redistricting.

"Governor DeWine's redistricting flip-flop reveals a man no longer in charge of his administration and it begs the question if he ever actually was," said Ohio Democratic Party Chair Elizabeth Walters. "Either Governor DeWine suddenly believes politicians actually should be drawing maps for Ohioans despite countless examples of him professing the opposite position, or he knows that future administrations will have a harder time passing the extremist agenda we see coming out of Columbus with a balanced legislature.""