19 April 2023

I was listening to Stephen Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People for the second time in over 20 years. Covey's principles are drawn from beliefs about self-awareness, self-control and taking responsibility for one's actions. One chapter covered the concepts of winners and losers concerning client and business owners. Covey wrote that the best answer is always the "win-win," and that nothing else is acceptable. Yet, in every aspect of American society, there are clear winners who work diligently to ensure that some win and others lose.

In the state of Ohio and in other states around the country, the electoral districts are gerrymandered to ensure that the votes from that district go to a single party, indefinitely. The goal is to win even if doing so suppresses every citizen's rights to representation. This is not the definition of democracy that I was taught in school.

According to the Princeton Gerrymandering Project, Ohio's districts are skewed in favor of the Republican Party. As a result, Ohio is viewed as a "red state," instead of balanced. As an example, district 67 contains several cities in a jigsaw pattern to ensure a Republican majority.

The image below shows the Ohio party distribution, a sea of red with various islands of blue. After having lived in this state for over 20 years, I always believed that the red sea was a result of the concentration of Republicans in the rural areas however, there is more at play.

With this type of districting, the legislation that is sent from the State House and Senate---and not put on a ballot for all Ohioans to vote on---only reflects the values of roughly half of the voting population. It is a direct result of the gerrymandered districts.

As with organizations and companies that lack diversity in its leadership and ignore a segment of the population in its hiring and marketing, the Republicans do so to their detriment and to the detriment of the entire state. Narrow thinking that ignores the collective always leads to failure ... and they seem hell bent on rushing to get there.