Public Education Matters

Enter the Design Ohio's Future contest to redraw Ohio’s district maps 

• OEA's contest is open to all Ohio middle schoolers, high schoolers, and OEA members. 
• Categories: Most politically competitive | Fewest community splits | Most creative
• DEADLINE UPDATE: Due to intense interest in the contest, the deadline for submissions has been extended until JUNE 1, 2021
• For full details and rules, click here. 

• Katy Shanahan 
  • Katy Shanahan currently serves as the Ohio State Director for All On The Line, a grassroots advocacy campaign that is part of a national effort to end gerrymandering. She is an attorney who has worked in progressive electoral politics for over a decade with the mission of ensuring that all voters have equitable access to the ballot box and to fair representation. She received both her Juris Doctor and Master's degree in Public Policy and Management from The Ohio State University and is barred to practice law in the state of Ohio and Washington, DC.

"Gerrymandering is a form of cheating during the redistricting process... Here in Ohio, we are home to some of the most gerrymandered districts in the country, and that's true for both our state legislative and congressional maps, and that means for the last decade, Ohioans have been denied any real form of adequate political representation."

• 2:10 - One person, one vote: Redistricting every 10 years to account for how populations have changed or shifted across the last decade 
• 3:30 - Dealing with census data delays
• 5:40 - The importance of accurate census data beyond redistricting, including its impact on school funding
• 7:45 - Ohio's gerrymandering problem
• 9:00 - The ramifications of the disconnect between how Ohioans behave at the ballot box and who gets elected
• 10:30 - Gerrymandering makes Ohio's politics more extreme, to the left and to the right, because the only real competition candidates face is in their primaries, where turnout is the base of the base. Districts must be politically competitive in the general elections.
• 13:10 - The importance of keeping communities whole: "Our communities when they are cracked apart are not as strong as when they are kept together."
• 15:30 - The redistricting reform measures Ohio voters approved in 2015 and 2018
• 17:00 - Messing up maps - villainy or incompetence? "I actually think our map drawers in 2011 were both bad actors and also very good at drawing bad maps"
• 18:30 - Starting with community mapping
• 19:30 - "I'm not here to say that [redistricting] is an easy task. But what I will say is that it's worth the hard work, because what comes out of it is whether or not we have the ability to take charge of our democracy."

"There are so many issues here in Ohio that we're not able to make progress on, not because there isn't public support to make progress on those issues, but because our elected officials don't actually represent us and they don't need to, because our politicians back in 2011 cheated in the redistricting process to gerrymander or manipulate our district lines to give them much more electoral victories than they're actually winning in votes at the ballot box."

• Have questions about the Design Ohio's Future contest? Email contest@ohea.org
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• The Ohio Education Association represents more than 120,000 teachers, faculty members and support professionals who work in Ohio’s schools, colleges, and universities to help improve public education and the lives of Ohio’s children. OEA members provide professional services to benefit students, schools, and the public in virtually every position needed to run Ohio’s schools.
• Education Matters host Katie Olmsted serves as Media Relations Consultant for the Ohio Education Association. She joined OEA in May, 2020, after a ten-year career as a television reporter, anchor, and producer. Katie comes from a family of educators and is passionate about telling educators' stories and advocating for Ohio's students.