DeWine’s promised to fix Ohio’s broken voting districts. We are waiting.

“What I hope happens is that we can defeat (Issue 1) in the fall … and I will push and I will do whatever I can to lead so that we end up with something that’s better than what we have now. …. I will do everything I can to get it on the ballot by initiative.”

Those were the words of Ohio Republican Gov. Mike DeWine a year ago when he announced his opposition to Issue 1, the 2024 gerrymandering reform amendment strongly rejected by voters at the urging of Donald Trump as he won the White House again.

A year later, Ohio is about to redraw its Congressional districts again with the 2026 election looming on the horizon. More gerrymandering could help a controversial president’s party maintain power in the U.S. House of Representatives and overcome normal mid-term election woes.

With Republicans controlling every aspect of state government, most expect an effort to redraw maps to win more than the 10 of 15 seats the GOP currently holds. The likely targets are Rep. Emilia Sykes, D-Akron, and Rep. Marcy Kaptur, D-Toledo. Some have suggested Republicans may draw maps creating 13 winnable districts.

Even a 12-3 map would give Republicans 80% of Ohio’s congressional seats even though Trump won just 55% of Ohio’s vote.

That’s wrong.

A similar scenario could play out in California, where Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom wants to help his party win the U.S. House of Representatives, especially if Texas Republicans redraw their maps to help as many as five Republicans run in more friendly districts.

Trump and Republicans see this opportunity as a way to preserve the president’s power for his entire term. Democrats believe nothing less than the future of our democracy is at stake.

But their collective fears and ambitions don’t justify the illegal practice of gerrymandering, the jockeying of political boundaries to help your political party beat the other side.

Gerrymandering is wrong, whether it’s done by Republicans or Democrats.

The governor is now speechless

DeWine will again be part of Ohio’s redistricting process despite his expressed disdain for allowing politicians to draw the political boundaries that shape their future election wins or losses.

But the governor has gone silent on gerrymandering since Republicans successfully confused Ohioans by falsely claiming Issue 1 would require gerrymandering. To be sure, the Issue was complicated, but it unquestionably would have taken power away from greedy politicians.

A year ago, DeWine threw his support behind Iowa’s system for redistricting, using its nonpartisan legislative research division to draw political maps for approval by lawmakers. While that would be an improvement over Ohio’s current system that allows partisans to craft maps in secret, the final power would still remain with lawmakers under DeWine’s idea.

How many of us would vote for a map that made our re-election less likely?

Ohio’s new maps are required for the 2026, 2028 and 2030 elections because Democrats didn’t support the current maps drawn after the 2020 Census. A split Ohio Supreme Court decided Republicans’ maps were unconstitutional multiple times, rulings the party ignored until a federal court stepped in to clear their use.

That prompted the 2024 ballot issue and DeWine’s unfulfilled pledge.

Can Republicans ignore Democrats again?

This time around, Republicans still completely control state government and now enjoy a super-friendly Ohio Supreme Court with a 6-1 GOP majority. Former Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor won’t be there to rule against her own party as she did over and over again.

The legislature has until Sept. 30 to approve a congressional map with support from at least three-fifths of lawmakers in each chamber and half of the Democrats. That only seems feasible if the current map is used, which is unlikely.

If lawmakers fail, the Ohio Redistricting Commission — DeWine, Secretary of State Frank LaRose, Auditor Keith Faber and two Republican lawmakers and two Democratic lawmakers — can approve a map with bipartisan support by Oct. 31. If they fail, lawmakers get a second chance to approve a map, this time needing support from three-fifths of members and one-third of Democrats.

As a last resort, Republicans can approve maps without any Democratic votes if the districts don’t “unduly” favor a political party or incumbents or split counties, townships and municipalities.

But with a much more favorable state high court, how much attention will Republicans pay to those guidelines?

What makes maps fair?

There are endless debates about what fair political maps should look like.

The odd thing is the current wording in the Ohio Constitution does a pretty good job of spelling out fairness — if the provisions are followed.

For congressional districts, it states:

• Districts must comply with all laws and the Ohio and federal constitutions, including those protecting racial minority voting rights.

• “Every congressional district shall be compact.”

• “Every congressional district shall be composed of contiguous territory, and the boundary of each district shall be a single nonintersecting continuous line.”

• Creates requirements for splitting counties and cities in specific, sensible ways. For example, Akron and Summit County can’t be in four districts as they were before 2022. The language also specifies how many counties can be split into two districts.

The current system produced better maps than the extreme gerrymandering of 2012 to 2022, but fell short of delivering the balanced playing field Ohioans deserve.

Neither party deserves a quota of seats regardless of voting trends.

Republicans would be wise to keep the status quo rather than abusing their power yet again and further alienating voters concerned about an unpopular and unrestrained president.

These decisions should be about fairness, not political calculations.

DeWine professes to understand this, but has done nothing to fix the problem.

This editorial was written by Dispatch Executive Editor Michael Shearer on behalf of the editorial board of The Columbus Dispatch. Editorials are fact-based assessments of issues of importance to the communities we serve. These are not the opinions of our reporting staff members, who strive for neutrality in their reporting.

This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Why Ohio gerrymandering on verge of getting worse | Our view