Jordan hails from Ohio’s 4th Congressional District, a mostly rural, deeply red swath of west-central Ohio that, between 2010 and 2020, was shaped roughly like a duck, stretching from practically the Indiana border to the Lake Erie shoreline.
Jordan’s district was carved out in a congressional map drawn by Ohio Republicans and designed to concentrate power in as many GOP districts as possible, which explains its bizarre contours.
Before the latest round of congressional reapportionment in 2020, the 4th District was routinely ranked as one of the worst gerrymandered House seats in the country. And throughout that time it did precisely what it was designed to do — elect Jordan by massive margins.
The latest round of districting made Jordan’s district a bit less… mallard-like. But it didn’t impact his electoral outcome. In 2022, Jordan still won 69% of votes.
Ohio voters green-lit reforms in 2015 and 2018 designed to stamp out partisan gerrymandering. But after those reforms failed to have much of a material impact on the maps produced, voting-rights advocates are again taking their fight to the ballot box, attempting to collect enough signatures to put another round of reform measures in front of voters in 2024.
It’s not clear yet what impact it might have on Jordan’s district, but it could be significant if the state is forced to adopt radically more balanced maps without Republicans controlling the process. The group pushing the reforms, Citizens Not Politicians, wants to create a new bipartisan redistricting commission that bans all politicians, lobbyists and donors as members. It also wants to make it unconstitutional for the map-drawing process to discriminate against a particular political party or politician, meaning Republicans will no longer be able to use the process to unfairly advantage their own.
!function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s){if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function(){n.callMethod?
n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments)};if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;
n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version=’2.0′;n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0;
t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0];
s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)}(window,document,’script’,’
fbq(‘init’, ‘1621685564716533’);
fbq(‘track’, “PageView”);
var _fbPartnerID = null;
if (_fbPartnerID !== null) {
fbq(‘init’, _fbPartnerID + ”);
fbq(‘track’, “PageView”);
}