Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine said the first meeting to redraw Ohio’s congressional and legislative districts is set for Friday.
The commission will convene on Aug. 6 to begin the new redistricting process before the mid-September deadline to complete the new maps. The data will include counts of population by race, Hispanic origin, voting age and housing occupancy status at geographic levels as small as neighborhoods.
The data will be used for drawing voting districts for Congress and state legislatures. The release of the data will happen more than four months after the April 1 date on which it normally arrives due to the impact of the coronavirus.
Due to sluggish population growth, the state will loose a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives starting in 2023. The process to remake Ohio’s Congressional map from 16 districts to 15 will be done under new voter-approved rules