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Giant banners that read in Portuguese: “Long live King Pele, 82 years”, are displayed in the stands of the Vila Belmiro stadium, home of the Santos soccer club, where Pele’s funeral will take place, in Santos, Brazil, Saturday, Dec. 31, 2022. Pele, who played most of his career with Santos, died in Sao Paulo on Thursday at the age of 82. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix)

SANTOS, Brazil (AP) — Pelé. Santos, Brazil.

Over decades, adoring fans around the world mailed thousands of letters, postcards and packages to the sports legend without his address or full name.

Almost without fail, they reached the office of Edson Arantes do Nascimento in the port city he made famous.

Santos was founded by the Portuguese in January 1546. It hosts Latin America’s biggest port, which feeds the Sao Paulo area and exports the country’s agricultural commodities to the planet.

Only after a 15-year-old sensation started scoring goals for the city’s team did Santos, a city of about 430,000 residents today, become a household name. The Brazilian great, who died Thursday at 82 after fighting cancer, played there from 1956 to 1974.

“There’s a Santos before Pelé and another after him,” said Serginho Chulapa, Brazil’s striker in the 1982 World Cup and a local hero with more than 100 goals for the club. “He put both the city and club on the map. Before him, people came to work at the port and go to the beach.”

Chulapa had four spells at Santos FC as a player, all during the 1980s. Since retirement he has worked at the club in different capacities, some of them alongside Pelé.

“Santos is not in a metropolis like Sao Paulo, we have to work with less money. And Pelé made this club gigantic since he started playing,” Chulapa said. “Santos had its peak with him.”

Pelé gave Santos two Copa Libertadores titles and two Intercontinental Cup titles against Benfica and AC Milan, as it beat some of the best rivals around the world. The Brazilian great won 26 titles at the club.

Some of Brazil’s top politicians, including President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, have lived in the coastal city. But one of Santos’s main touristic attractions is the Pelé Museum. It lies in the renovated area of the Casaroes do Valongo, close to the city port. It opened in 2014 and hosts tens of thousands of tourists. Many are like Gisela Claudia, 65, who arrived on a cruise ship to spend New Year’s Eve in the city.

“It is my first time in Santos. And I only came in this cruise because my husband wanted to see the city of Pelé,” Claudia said.

“He is lost somewhere in the museum,” she said. “There are other beaches on this trip that are more beautiful than this. But none of them have this history of the greatest player.”

The museum features some of Pelé’s remaining memorabilia: boots, trophies, medals, shirts.

Santos has become a popular destination for New Year’s Eve, specially among residents of Sao Paulo, who grew fond of its clubs, beaches and a few private islands where parties take place. But the local club’s Vila Belmiro stadium, where Pelé’s funeral will take place on Monday, remains one of the city’s main tourist attractions.

The last time Santos consistently filled its arena’s 16,000 seats was between 2009 and 2013, when striker Neymar played there.

Santos FC is also home to other renowned players, most of them coming from its academy long after Pelé had retired. The list includes Rodrygo, Elano, Zé Roberto, Giovanni, Robinho, Diego and Gabriel Barbosa.

Pelé’s death is expected to change many names around Santos. The first is expected to be the port, which will be renamed King Pelé Port, the incoming federal administration has decided.

Architect Maria Tereza Myre Dores, one of Pelé’s closest friends and his neighbor in the final years of his life in the neighboring city of Guaruja, says Santos the club and Santos the city will never be the same.

“He was Santos. He loved the city, loved the club. And he made both better and bigger,” Myre Dores said.

“I still remember the afternoons he spent in his office signing letters and shirts for people everywhere. One by one and sending them back, even those that only came with those three words; Pelé, Santos, Brazil,” the architect said. “Without him, Santos is less Santos.”

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Skylines around the world have been lit up by fireworks and bright lights as the year 2023 begins.
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FILE – Ohio Elections Chief Frank LaRose, right, talks about his desire for a new, 10-year map of the state’s legislative districts at a meeting of the Ohio Redistricting Commission, Aug. 31, 2021, in Columbus, Ohio, as Rep. Emilia Sykes, of Akron, listens. The election contests of 2022 may have been held and decided, but Ohio’s political maps remain far from settled. What was supposed to be a once-per-decade process for redrawing the state’s U.S. House and Statehouse districts to reflect updated 2020 population figures now promises to extend into 2023, and probably longer. (AP Photo/Andrew Welsh-Huggins, File)

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — The election contests of 2022 may have been held and decided, but Ohio’s political maps remain far from settled.

It was supposed to be a once-per-decade process for redrawing the state’s U.S. House and Statehouse districts, in order to reflect updated population figures from the 2020 Census. Now it promises to extend into 2023, and probably longer.

While most U.S. states managed to eventually settle their map disputes, Ohio’s protracted ordeal has trapped it in a uniquely confounding legal stalemate.

Here’s a look at how Ohio got here, and what may (or may not) come next:

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HOW DID THE NEW MAPMAKING PROCESS WORK?

This was the first time Ohio tried out new ways of drawing congressional and legislative maps.

In 2015, Ohio voters were looking to avoid partisan gerrymandering, and voted overwhelmingly to empower a new, bipartisan Ohio Redistricting Commission to draw Statehouse maps. Those are the districts of the state senators and representatives whom voters send to Columbus.

Under the new rules, if both political parties said yes to the new boundaries, the maps would be in place for a full decade. Single-party support would result in a four-year map.

In 2018, another successful constitutional amendment was also wildly popular with voters. It set up a new system for drawing the state’s U.S. House districts — that is, the districts of the representatives that voters send to Washington.

The state Legislature would get the first crack at drawing the lines. If they failed, the commission would be next. If it failed, then the Legislature could try a final time. A three-fifths majority of the minority party — in this case, Democrats — would need to agree to the new map for it to be in place for 10 years. Barring that, again, it would last only four years.

As it turned out, the seeming incentives for bipartisan compromise failed and Democrats didn’t cast a single vote for any of the final maps, which were all Republican-drawn.

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WHAT POWER DID THE NEW SYSTEM GIVE THE STATE’S HIGH COURT?

Voters gave the Ohio Supreme Court “exclusive, original jurisdiction” to decide legal challenges, which included three lawsuits against the legislative maps and two lawsuits against the congressional map.

In a series of 4-3 votes, the court struck down every map they were sent. The court said the maps unduly benefited one party: Republicans. Those maps included two separate congressional maps — one approved by lawmakers in November 2021 and a second that cleared the redistricting commission in March 2022 — and five sets of Statehouse maps.

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YET OHIO’S ELECTIONS HAPPENED ANYWAY?

That’s right. Amid the legal clashes of the past year, courts allowed Ohio to go forward with May and August primaries under unconstitutional maps.

This fall, Republicans won 10 of Ohio’s 15 congressional seats under the disputed U.S. House map (although Democrats netted several notable wins ). The disputed Statehouse maps yielded even larger Republican supermajorities.

But the maps aren’t valid beyond this election cycle. They will need to be redrawn.

OK, SO THE MAPS DIDN’T FLY. WERE THERE CONSEQUENCES?

That’s the conundrum. Even as they missed deadlines and flouted court instructions, Republicans argued that they were doing all they could to understand and interpret a fledgling process. The court’s orders were unreasonable and conflicting, they said.

The voting-rights and Democratic groups that won seven consecutive rounds in court argued for lawmakers or commissioners to be held in contempt of court.

Ultimately, the justices balked. Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor told The Associated Press in a year-end interview that she feared taking such action would create a constitutional crisis.

Importantly, the Ohio Supreme Court had no other enforcement options available to it. The new system neither allowed the court to impose a particular map — say, one favored by the suing parties or developed by experts — nor to draw their own.

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WHERE DO THOSE CASES STAND NOW?

Ohio’s congressional map dispute is now awaiting action in the U.S. Supreme Court, where Republican legislative leaders have appealed for a review of their loss in state court.

The case could be considered in conjunction with the closely watched Moore v. Harper case, whose oral arguments were held in December. That case seeks to resolve whether the U.S. Constitution’s provision giving state legislatures the power to make the rules about the “times, places and manner” of congressional elections means state courts can be cut out of the process.

If Ohio’s appeal is denied, Republican Ohio House Speaker Bob Cupp has said lawmakers will then have 30 days to pass a new congressional map. But the high court’s decision isn’t expected for months.

Meanwhile, Ohio’s legislative maps expired with the November 2022 election — on orders of a federal court. The Ohio Redistricting Commission will have to come back together and make new, constitutionally compliant maps in time for 2024 elections. The state constitution says that process can’t begin before July 1 of this year. Lawsuits challenging Statehouse maps, which ended in a draw this summer, remain open.

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HAVE OHIO’S POLITICAL DYNAMICS CHANGED?

Yes and no. The Ohio Redistricting Commission — made up of the governor, secretary of state, auditor and four lawmakers — remained 5-2 in Republicans’ favor after the November elections.

Cupp, a key player in the redistricting saga, is retiring, but his successor will also be Republican.

But the Ohio Supreme Court’s political leaning may have changed.

O’Connor, a Republican who was a key swing vote on the court, retired Saturday because of age limits. The ascension of her successor, GOP Justice Sharon Kennedy, left a court vacancy to which Republican Gov. Mike DeWine has appointed Republican Joe Deters, the longtime Hamilton County prosecutor.

Time will tell whether Deters sides with the 7-member court’s other three Republican justices — unlike O’Connor — altering earlier case outcomes.

For her part, O’Connor has announced plans to pursue redistricting reforms in the Ohio Constitution, likely the type of independent commission she wrote about in one of her decisions. Many others are collaborating on similar efforts. The timing of any ballot campaign hasn’t been determined.

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