The Ohio Supreme Court granted the backers of Issue 1, the proposed constitutional amendment intended to end gerrymandering, a partial victory Monday in their suit against the Ohio Ballot Board. But the court largely upheld the allegedly “deceptive” language that the board adopted to describe the amendment to voters, including an ironic use of the word gerrymander.The court ordered the Ballot Board to meet again to rewrite two of the 10 sections of the description of Issue 1 that will appear on printed ballots. Citizens Not Politicians (CNP), the coalition that got Issue 1 on the ballot, sounded ready to move on in a statement released Monday evening.“While we disagree with much of the decision, we agree with the court’s repudiation of the politicians on the Ballot Board for violating the Ohio Constitution and writing language that was ‘inaccurate,’ ‘defective,’ and amounted to ‘argumentation’ against Issue 1,” the coalition said in a statement.“Everyone knows what’s happening here. Citizens are going to fire politicians and lobbyists from drawing maps by voting Yes on Issue 1, and the politicians hate that. So politicians are lying and doing everything they can to confuse voters.”Will Issue 1 end gerrymandering or just change it?Gerrymandering is the practice of drawing political district boundaries in ways that benefit one party over another. Both parties have used gerrymandering to their own advantage at different times and in different states. In Ohio today, it’s Republicans who benefit.Issue 1 would ban elected officials from the process of drawing the boundaries of districts for the Ohio legislature and the state’s U.S. House of Representatives districts and replace them with a commission of citizens. Gov. Mike DeWine, Ballot Board Chair Secretary of State Frank LaRose and other Republicans oppose Issue 1.At an Aug. 16 board meeting, the Republicans on the Ballot Board outvoted the Democrats to adopt the allegedly deceptive language that will be printed on paper ballots for the November election. CNP, whose suggested ballot language was rejected by the Republican majority on the board, quickly sued in the Ohio Supreme Court.But the court agreed with only two parts of CNP’s argument, pertaining to the Ballot Board’s description of limits on challenging the new commission’s decisions in court and the public’s right to influence the commission.The court sided with the Ballot Board on the most controversial part of its description, which states that the new redistricting commission would be “required to gerrymander” districts to achieve the amendment’s intended outcomes.LaRose called the court’s decision “a huge win for Ohio voters.”“It won’t stop the false advertising that’s about to get dumped on the airwaves, but at least voters will know the facts if they read the accurate summary on their ballot,” LaRose said in a statement. He said the board will meet on Wednesday morning to approve the “minor adjustments” that the court ordered.The post Ohio Supreme Court orders some changes to Issue 1 ballot language appeared first on Signal Cleveland.First published by Signal Cleveland.