Ohio Republicans discussing impeachment of Chief Justice Maureen O'Connor after map ruling
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Source: Columbus Dispatch
House Republicans are discussing whether to impeach Chief Justice Maureen O'Connor after the Ohio Supreme Court rejected a third set of legislative maps and effectively ended all hope of a full May 3rd primary.
The court struck down the maps on Wednesday with O'Connor as the deciding vote, sending the Ohio Redistricting Commission back to the drawing board for the fourth time. A ruling on the latest congressional maps is expected any day.
O'Connor, a Republican, is seen as an independent voice on the court and sided with Democrat justices to throw out multiple sets of maps, arguing they did not comply with constitutional rules for redistricting. That's increasingly made her a target of fellow party members who contend she's shirking her responsibilities.
Read more: https://www.dispatch.com/story/news/2022/03/18/ohio-republicans-want-impeach-maureen-oconnor-over-redistricting/7088996001/?utm_source=dispatch&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=news_alerts&utm_term=news_alert&utm_content=OHIO-COLUMBUS-NLETTER01
So -- let me get this straight. No allegations of a crime. No misdemeanor. No ethics violations. She just ruled according to the laws of the state of Ohio and the US Constitution and legal precedent.
And the party of 'law and order' wants her thrown out.
She won't let them gerrymander democrats and minorities completely out of the power structure and they want her gone.
These are of course the same folks who supported all of Ohio's national Rethugs who refused to impeach and remove someone who committed ACTUAL CRIMES -- not once but twice.
The hypocrisy makes me want to vomit even though I am not at all surprised by it.
= new reply since forum marked as read
Plan.
The GOP loons here in PA were trying to do the same thing back in 2018 when they finally threw out the gerrymandered mess that was the PA congressional map -
By Christopher Ingraham
February 22, 2018
Sen. Patrick J. Toomey (R-Pa.) is one of a number of Pennsylvania Republicans exploring whether the state's Supreme Court justices should be impeached. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke, File)
Republican lawmakers from Pennsylvania who lost a gerrymandering case before the state’s Supreme Court are now calling for justices who issued the ruling to be impeached. The court ruled this year that the congressional map drawn by Republican legislators in 2011 was a partisan gerrymander that “clearly, plainly, and palpably” violated the state constitution, and the justices ordered the state’s legislature and governor to draw a new map.
Shortly thereafter, Republican state Rep. Cris Dush circulated a letter to his colleagues saying that the court’s majority “engaged in misbehavior in office” because the ruling “overrides the express legislative and executive authority” to create laws. “Wherefore,” Dush concluded, “each is guilty of an impeachable offense warranting removal from office and disqualification to hold any office or trust or profit under this Commonwealth.” For several weeks, Dush was the only lawmaker openly advocating this idea.
Then, after Pennsylvania's Republican legislative leaders and Democratic governor were unable to agree on a new map, the court stepped in and drew one of its own with the help of an independent redistricting expert from Stanford University. The court’s new map largely undid the Republican gerrymander, creating 10 Republican-leaning and eight Democratic-leaning House seats, as estimated using 2016 presidential election returns. Outside redistricting experts who were not involved with the case praised the new map, calling it “fairer” and “much more competitive” than the old one.
The new map is a better reflection both of the composition of the state’s electorate, which tends to be divided evenly between Democrats and Republicans, and of the traditional redistricting criteria used to draw maps in Pennsylvania and elsewhere. But because the 2011 Republican-drawn map was skewed so strongly toward the GOP, the net result is that Republicans are likely to lose three or more seats in the state’s House delegation. And now, the calls for judicial impeachment are growing louder.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/02/22/pennsylvania-republicans-lost-the-redistricting-battle-now-theyre-declaring-war-on-the-courts/
The net result of that final map (in 2018) was that the states delegation went from 13 (R) - 5 (D) to 9 (R) - 9 (D), so the GOP lost 4 seats here. The original map had been an extreme violation of the PA State Constitution that required that the districts be "compact and contiguous" and they were anything but.
Our state Supreme Court just did the same thing again this year after the census meant the state lost a seat as nationwide, the redistricting process was underway. The GOP loons tried to re-gerrymander the districts and refused to accept our (D) governor's map.
The court ended up simply slightly revising what they had already done a few years ago in order to eliminate a seat (in western PA where the population loss occurred) and re-balanced some of the districts in the east by slightly changing lines into adjacent counties to even out the numbers per district over here. The map they used was the one promoted by Marc Elias on behalf of Eric Holder's org - NDRC.
Link to tweet
@marceelias
🚨BREAKING: Pennsylvania Supreme Court ADOPTS new congressional map. Court selects maps put forward by our clients (Carter) as new statewide map!
Proud of the work @EliasLawGroup and @RedistrictFdn did to ensure fair maps in Pennsylvania.
democracydocket.com
Carter v. Chapman ⚖️
Learn more.
11:29 AM · Feb 23, 2022
