(To circulate petitions, go to ohfairdistricts.com.)

Ohioans are set to finish the job. In 2015, Ohio voters resoundingly passed an issue to slay statehouse gerrymanders. Now many are signing petitions for a ballot issue to slay Congressional gerrymanders.

Gerrymanders are irregular legislative districts drawn to favor one political party. The 2015 statehouse anti-gerrymander redistricting issue passed with 71% of the vote. It establishes a bi-partisan commission that must have at least two votes from representatives of each of the two biggest parties to adopt a district map.

The new Congressional redistricting issue uses the same commission and follows nearly the same procedures and map-drawing criteria as the statehouse redistricting law. Its map-drawing criteria are:

• compliance with law,
• contiguousness,
• no party favoritism,
• avoidance of splitting counties, cities and townships,
• representational fairness (based on statewide partisan preferences of voters), and
• compactness.