“Redistricting is the process by which new congressional and state legislative district boundaries are drawn … District lines are redrawn every 10 years following completion of the United States census. The federal government stipulates that districts must have nearly equal populations and must not discriminate on the basis of race or ethnicity.
“Virginia was apportioned 11 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives after the 2020 census, the same number it received after the 2010 census … “In Virginia, congressional and state legislative district boundaries are set by a 16-member commission comprising state legislators and non-legislator citizens. The General Assembly must vote to approve the maps without amending them. If the General Assembly rejects the first set of draft maps, the commission must submit another. If the General Assembly rejects this second set of draft maps, the Virginia Supreme Court is tasked with enacting new maps.
“…The Virginia Redistricting Commission [had] released two statewide congressional map proposals on October 14, 2021, and another on October 15, 2021 [missing its] deadline for approving map proposals[.] The Virginia Supreme Court [then] assumed authority over the process [and] the two special masters selected by the court released proposals for congressional districts on December 8, 2021. The Virginia Supreme Court unanimously approved district maps for the Virginia House of Delegates and Virginia State Senate on December 28, 2021.
“Democratic and Republican consultants submitted statewide map proposals for consideration to the Virginia Redistricting Commission on September 18, 2021… After the commission missed its deadline for approving map proposals and the Virginia Supreme Court assumed authority over the process … two special masters selected by the court released proposals for House and Senate districts on December 8, 2021. These maps took effect for Virginia’s 2023 legislative elections [ballotpedia.org].”
That’s where Virginia stands prior to next month’s referendum and will stand if the referendum to allow changing the current 10-year “term” for redistricting fails to pass.
Last year Donald Trump’s demand that Republican-led states gerrymander their congressional maps to help his party retain control of the House of Representatives in November’s midterm election has triggered a national battle over redistricting.
“The fight began when Republicans in Texas, the most populous Republican-led state, approved a rare mid-decade new congressional map aimed at flipping seats in the House of Representatives now occupied by Democrats. California, the most populous Democratic-led state responded with its own redistricting effort targeting five Republican-held districts [Reuters].”
And now we are engaged in a great gerrymandering war, testing which party can legally cheat the other out of control of the United States House of Representatives.
I was preoccupied with other matters last fall when I started hearing about an effort in Virginia to “let the people decide Virginia’s redistricting,” an effort that would culminate over the next several months on April 21.
I wondered, “How were ‘we the people of Virginia’ to decide redistricting?” I hadn’t heard anything about there being a referendum to decide, but that may have been due to my inattentiveness.
Were we all to show up somewhere with a magic marker and share our suggestions?
When I finally saw the version of the “People’s Redistricting of Virginia,” it was obviously the Democratic Party, not the “people of Virginia,” attempting to gerrymander the Republicans out of areas they had long dominated.
The “referendum” April 21 does not endorse the new redistricting. It just allows the Virginia legislature to forego the 10-year “term” for each redistricting to whenever the politicians want to make a change in district boundaries.
Then the Virginia Supreme Court will decide if this new method of redistricting is constitutional or not.
The legislature is currently Democratic. What happens if it swings Republican?
Worse, what happens if MAGA, Hydra-like, sprouts new heads and wins control of the legislature?
All Virginians deserve to be represented in their government, no matter their politics, economics, race, religion, heritage, or social standing. The Gerrymandered are now left a weak and isolated minority in their newly aligned district.
Equally important to me is the fact that this playbook is Donald Trump’s!
Trump has striven to polarize our country and disenfranchise all who oppose him.
I don’t support those efforts or this lowering of the bar of the integrity of our democratic process of elections.
Nor will I support those lackies who willingly back Trump.
Nor do I support the idea to retaliate in kind!
This chicanery doesn’t belong in any democracy.
Like it or not, the Virginia counties west of the Blue Ridge have historically been a Republican stronghold.
District 6, our current district, did give a Democrat, James Olin, five terms in Congress, 1983-1993 without skewing the electorate.
Olin had followed Republican Caldwell Butler who served five terms also, from 1972 to 1983. He was able to get elected and re-elected without benefit of “fixing” the vote.
Butler was a law partner of Linwood Holton, who became the first post Byrd Machine governor of Virginia in 1970.
Holton was a principled Republican.
Famously, Butler, also a principled Republican, stood up for our Constitution and voted for the impeachment of Richard Nixon.
Where would our commonwealth and nation be had these Republicans been gerrymandered out of the system?!
Gerrymandering is undemocratic.
It divides and isolates people who share the same economics and politics into an unrepresented minority.
It hones the knives of partisanship. It limits the voter, essentially, to one candidate picked by party hacks.
It is certainly un-Virginian and un-Jeffersonian.
And by that august route, un-American!
Should one autocratic politician be allowed to continually corrupt our democratic processes?
