The contest to draw the best Ohio congressional districts is set to run from April 6 through May 4, with the winners to be announced May 11, the competition organizers announced last week.

The League of Women Voters of Ohio, working with Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner and other partners, are staging the "redistricting competition" to show there are viable ways to make redistricting more objective and less partisan.

Plans will be evaluated based on scoring in four major areas: compactness and avoiding "bizarre" shapes; "communities of interest," or keeping counties, cities and places with shared interests in the same districts; competitiveness, meaning the district can be won by either party; and "representational fairness" to avoid any bias favoring one political party.

The contest is being run through a Web site, www.ohioredistricting.org. There is no cost to participate.

The idea is to promote "a robust public conversation" about redistricting with the goal of making recommendations to the state legislature for changes to the process.

-- Mark Niquette mniquette@dispatch.com