A report commissioned by the League of Women Voters of Ohio states the 6th Congressional District, which will elect a new representative in a Tuesday special election, is culturally, economically and geographically incompatible.

“It is a massive impediment to good representation,” David Niven, a University of Cincinnati political scientist who wrote the report, said during a Friday news conference.

The district is “built on incoherent and adversarial interests; it’s built on division,” said Niven, who’s been critical of the Ohio redistricting process and is a former speechwriter for Ted Strickland, when the Democrat was governor.

Niven acknowledged the 6th District is “a normal Ohio district in these days and times, which means to say it’s profoundly gerrymandered.”

The focus placed on the 6th District is because of Tuesday’s special election, said Jen Miller, the league’s executive director. That election pits state Sen. Michael Rulli, R-Salem, against Democrat Michael L. Kripchak of Youngstown.

“This report shows in tangible terms that rigging legislative maps to favor one political party or candidate over another harms voters,” Miller said.

The 6th Congressional District includes all of Mahoning, Columbiana, Carroll, Jefferson, Belmont, Harrison, Monroe, Noble and Washington counties and portions of Stark and Tuscarawas counties.

Mahoning is by far the most-populous county in the district.

The district has an 18% advantage to Republicans based on voting trends in partisan statewide elections over the past decade and is considered safe for the GOP.

The Ohio Supreme Court twice in 2022 found the congressional maps written by the Republican majority to be unconstitutional because of gerrymandering, but the second ruling came after that year’s primary.

Those who successfully sued in 2022 over the maps didn’t appeal for this year’s election because Democrats did better than expected in the 2022 election — winning five of the state’s 15 congressional seats — and because a shift in the court’s makeup likely wouldn’t have yielded a favorable result to a challenge.

A new congressional map is needed for the 2026 election because the one approved in 2022 by the Ohio Redistricting Commission is in effect through this year’s election.

Niven said: “There is no reason why the people of Washington County (the district’s southernmost county) and Mahoning County (its northernmost county) — who don’t see eye to eye, who are in different economies and different cultures in literally tangible ways, different geographies — need to be in the same district.”

The report states: “The 6th is a district built on adversarial economic interests. Northern counties feature manufacturing in pursuit of energy efficiency and renewable resources. Southern counties feature energy extraction in pursuit of delivering fossil fuels.”

Niven said the congressional map “imposes incoherent lines on voters by combining economies that compete against each other.”

Portions of Mahoning and Washington counties have been in the same district for more than 20 years and until the 2022 redistricting, the 6th District included even more counties and was one of the most Republican-leaning in the state.

Niven said the 6th was redrawn to “keep Northeast Ohio as Republican as possible” by putting all of Mahoning into a solid Republican district. Before the 2022 redistricting, most of Mahoning’s population was in a Democratic district with the rest of the county in the 6th.

Three black Youngstown residents have an ongoing federal lawsuit seeking to invalidate the state’s congressional map saying it disenfranchises black voters, particularly in the Mahoning Valley. The residents have asked a federal judicial panel hearing the case to not certify the results of Tuesday’s special congressional election.

The panel hasn’t ruled on the request as of Friday.