Still No Map

Partisan mapmakers in Ohio made distinctly emotional pleas to the Ohio Supreme Court on Thursday, as justices once again weigh whether to hold the state’s redistricting commission in contempt. The bipartisan commission has sent five different plans for state legislative districts to the high court. Four were invalidated and, on the fifth time around, the commission opted to send over a previously invalidated map. The endless fight, which long-suffering county election officials have likened to “Groundhog Day,” prevented primaries for the Ohio House and Ohio Senate from moving forward May 3. Republican commissioners have stalwartly defended their actions as making the best of time constraints and a cumbersome, sometimes conflicting set of court decisions and criteria for carrying out Ohio’s new political map-drawing system.