Matthew Ahn

I suspect that Council wouldn't be taking this approach if they weren't certain they had the votes to approve the map this week or next. But that cannot be the end of the story, or 2033 will look very similar—with political power winning out over our residents and neighborhoods. 4/4

The current Cleveland ward plan posted on City Council's website, which is different than the version posted on cleveland.com. The boundaries between Wards 5/6, 11/12, and 13/15 have moved.

The fact that the maps on the Council site have changed, with no notice of the changes, is an indication to me of what Council leadership thinks of the feedback they've received. (Look at the boundaries between Wards 5/6, 11/12, and 13/15 on this map compared to the one in my op-ed.)

Are neighborhoods kept together? Do opposite ends of wards feel like they belong together? Are natural barriers used for ward lines when possible? Hyacinth, West Park, and downtown are just three examples of where I believe these maps fall short.

bsky.app/profile/matt...

Blaine Griffin’s political favoritism shows in City Council Ward redistricting: Matthew Ahn In a heavily Democratic city, it is not partisan bias, but instead incumbent protection that is the primary evil of gerrymandering. And many proposed new Cleveland City Council wards have been subtly ...

Cleveland City Council leadership has not shown any meaningful desire to engage on the merits of their maps. I have numerous concerns with the lines, only a few of which are outlined here. 1/4

www.cleveland.com/opinion/2025...

A screenshot of a US Department of Defense webpage, in the format of a news release or similar, dated December 12, 2024, and labeled with the tag "DOD News". The title of the post reads "test" and the entire text of the post reads "asfasfasdfasfdasdfasfasfasfsadffffffffffffffffffffasdfsfsafsfdwfgasdgbdfbgdsgasdgdsbdb".

sooooooo true bestie www.defense.gov/News/News-St...

Public Comment Registrations to speak at a regular council meeting can be submitted between 12 (noon) on Wednesdays before the meeting and no later than 2 pm on the Monday of the regular 7 pm council meeting. (Early...

Again, if you share any of these concerns or have your own, I urge you to let Council know by:
- Leaving a voicemail at (216) 714-3006
- Emailing maps@clevelandcitycouncil.org
- Submitting online public comment on the City Council website

24/24

www.clevelandcitycouncil.org/resources/pu...

In other words, by not being stricter about the population variance this time, it likely guarantees that without some kind of change to the charter, we will have to go through this all again in eight years.

12. An unintended consequence of playing around with the ward population so much in this map is that even if the number of wards stays the same in 2033, we're likely to see SOME wards outside of that 5% threshold...which would necessitate more redistricting.

(The maps I created all were a lot stricter about equal population, and in my maps, the equivalent of new Ward 5 actually needed to cross over to the west side.) While there are a few plausible reasons for splitting downtown, I am not going to speculate.

I believe the only reason to have done this is to crack downtown and split it between three wards. If the west side wards aren't overpopulated, new Ward 7 can stay entirely west of the Cuyahoga River and does not need any slice of downtown at all.

This is legal: according to the courts, as long as your ward is within 5% of the average population, you're fine. What this means, of course, is that the range is 95% to 105% of the average ward population, thus creating a potential disparity of up to 10.53% between ward populations.

11. All of these neighborhood-splitting cuts are only necessary because Council has largely overpopulated the west side and Collinwood wards (diluting their votes) and largely underpopulated the other east side wards (increasing their voting power).

10. Because new Ward 5 now only has extreme northeastern, extreme northwestern, and extreme southwestern Slavic Village, it needs to take on a large portion of downtown in order to be appropriately populated.

The Garden Valley neighborhood, showing the split on East 79th that isolates about 20% of the neighborhood into Ward 6.

9. To draw the straight line that appears to "neatly" separate new Ward 5 and new Ward 6, the Garden Valley neighborhood is cut down the middle, with the sliver east of 79th Street (including Rid-All Farm and BOXSPOT) going to new Ward 6.

The border of proposed Wards 3 and 5 in far northern Slavic Village, where houses on the east sides of E 64th, 65th, and 67th Streets and on Newman Avenue are in Ward 5, but must walk or drive through Ward 3 in order to reach any other part of Ward 5.

8. As a result, most of the Hyacinth neighborhood has been added to new Ward 3, except for the houses at the very edge, along East 64th, 65th, and 67th Streets and Newman Avenue which are now part of new Ward 5 but cannot drive to the rest of their ward without passing through new Ward 3.

The narrowest part of proposed Ward 3, which runs far west from this point through an industrial area to pick up large portions of Slavic Village.

7. New Ward 3, the Slavic Village/Shaker Square ward (think about that one for a second), appears to be drawn to slice up Ward 12 and target a councilperson in an exercise of retribution and raw power. The skinniest point connecting the two "lobes" of this ward is only about 700 feet wide.

Indeed, picking a census block in the middle of Old Brooklyn's business district further increases confusion about what ward a small business owner might be in.

The 6-sided single census block that is part of Ward 4 rather than Ward 11.

...to keep new Ward 11 within the acceptable population range—and it's one of the most oddly shaped choices possible. Does Kris Harsh want to keep the Pearl Road United Methodist Church in his ward for some reason? (I assume the answer is no, but the choice of census block is very puzzling.)

(Honestly, I think it would be less egregious to redraw new Ward 11, the second Hispanic opportunity district, going west and to give Danny Kelly more of old Ward 15.)

6. A single census block in new Ward 4 in Old Brooklyn seems to have been selected almost at random...

5. Speaking of jagged edges, the western border of new Ward 12 includes exactly four census blocks from the old Ward 16, one of which includes Danny Kelly's home. It's not going to be as egregious-looking as the old Ward 11 scorpion's tail, but I'd argue that it's a similar problem.

A proposed ward that uses the proposed Ward 11's southern boundaries, but instead of taking in Detroit-Shoreway, includes the Westown/West Boulevard neighborhood, which raises its Hispanic voting-age population from 26.5% to nearly 30%.

...with the goal of maximizing Latina/o voting population in the district, but seemed to ignore the fact that taking the district west toward West Park (rather than north toward the lake) actually increases the Latina/o voting population from that 26% to almost 30 percent.

A picture of the narrowest part of the proposed Ward 11, showing the single industrial building that connects the Detroit-Shoreway/Stockyards portion with the Old Brooklyn portion.

A ward that includes both Edgewater Park and the Zoo does not do that, especially when the narrowest portion connecting the two ends of the ward is only 1000 feet wide across a single industrial building.

4. Council drew a series of jagged edges along the Detroit-Shoreway portion of new Ward 11...

3. Council leadership claimed they drew the squiggly "new Ward 11", an Edgewater/Detroit-Shoreway/West Boulevard/Stockyards/Old Brooklyn ward, at the request of the Hispanic Roundtable, but in the same breath noted that the Roundtable asked them to keep neighborhoods together...

Demographic statistics for Cleveland's proposed wards, which show that the voting-age population in proposed wards 14 and 11 is 39.9% and 26.5% respectively, rather than the figures provided by Council.

BAD:
2. Council claims a 41% opportunity ward and a 29% opportunity ward for Latina/o voters, but I reproduced the map in Dave's Redistricting and I'm not getting those numbers. I think those wards are only 39.9% and 26.5% Hispanic.

Here are my 12 top-line thoughts on the map:

GOOD:
1. The "corners" of Cleveland are a little more cohesive. Rather than try to draw two Collinwood wards, which would have created two snakes, neighborhoods won out in the northeast. A win for good map-drawing principles.

Public Comment Registrations to speak at a regular council meeting can be submitted between 12 (noon) on Wednesdays before the meeting and no later than 2 pm on the Monday of the regular 7 pm council meeting. (Early...

If you share any of my concerns below or have concerns of your own, I urge you to let City Council know by:
- Leaving a voicemail at (216) 714-3006
- Emailing maps@clevelandcitycouncil.org
- Submitting online public comment on the City Council website

www.clevelandcitycouncil.org/resources/pu...

Think about whether it feels like neighborhoods are protected and if opposite corners of wards belong together. I have major concerns: this map, while quite different from all four of my maps in yesterday's post, feels in many ways like Map 1, the sneaky-bad one.

bsky.app/profile/matt...

This is a long thread with many concerns, some very technical, but I urge you to draw your own conclusions about this map if you don't have time to suffer through mine. Even if you don't read all 24 tweets, view the full-res map and read the next two.

www.clevelandcitycouncil.org/sites/defaul...

The new draft Cleveland ward map.

Well, those wards.

As I said on Channel 5 last night, transparency does not guarantee good results, so if Council leadership is serious that they are accepting feedback but not planning to implement any major changes, there are no protections for Clevelanders.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVqT...

Not too similar to any, but it's got the most similarities to Map 1, which was the sneaky-bad one.

Notably, Blaine specifically talked about having to stretch wards west to protect east side council folks, an obvious feature of the terrible Map 2.

bsky.app/profile/cleb...