The New Yorker: State legislatures are torching democracy

In an article in The New Yorker, David Niven is featured as an expert on how Ohio ranks high as one of the top states with a Republican foothold in the state legislature. This, he says, is due to the gerrymandering of electoral maps  – as evidenced by the Ohio abortion legislation following the Supreme Court’s overturn of Roe v Wade.

“It doesn’t have a voter base to support a total abortion ban, yet that’s a likely outcome,” concluding that “Ohio has become the Hindenburg of democracy,” Niven, an associate professor in UC’s School of Public and International Affairs, told the publication.

The article explains how Ohio became one of the most fiercely fought battleground states in Presidential politics, but how little attention is paid to election at the state level. “Ohio is about the second most gerrymandered statehouse in the country,” he said.

Niven recently commented in USA Today that state supreme courts are something of the hidden giant of American politics that have enormous effects on policy outcomes and yet they’re given almost no thought by the average voter. Turnout, he said, often suffers from "runoff," where voters make selections in other races but skip the lesser-known judicial elections.

Niven is a trusted academic resource on local, regional and national politics. His research focus is on political campaigns, gerrymandering, political communication and death penalty policy.

UC’s School of Public and International Affairs was created out of the former Department of Political Science, which dates to 1914. Experts from the school are regularly cited in national and international media outlets.

The school is widely known for having academic experts in all aspects of the political realm and Niven is a trusted media source often cited for having his finger on the pulse of American politics.

Read The New Yorker article