Ohio’s redistricting process: How much of it should be done in public?

COLUMBUS, Ohio — While it remains to be seen this fall how Ohio leaders will redraw the state’s congressional maps, it’s likely that whatever redistricting plan they end up passing will be negotiated and drawn behind closed doors.

That raises the question of exactly how transparent Ohio’s much-maligned redistricting process should be.

Ohio Republicans have authored the state’s congressional and legislative lines for the last two decades in private – sometimes with such secrecy that even some GOP officials directly involved in the redistricting process were kept in the dark about map-drawing efforts .

But while Democrats and good-government groups have unceasingly criticized Republicans for not passing redistricting maps in a more open way, the Ohio Constitution only has limited requ