ABC7 (“Virginia governor approves amendment to allow Dems to gerrymander Congressional districts“):
Among the first bills Abigail Spanberger signed into law as governor Friday morning was placing a constitutional amendment on the ballot to allow Democrats to gerrymander Congressional districts.
Democratic lawmakers in Virginia and on Capitol Hill want to redraw Virginia’s 11 congressional districts so they can pick up four U.S. House seats in November as President Donald Trump urges red states to redraw their district lines to be more favorable to Republicans in time for the 2026 midterm election.
Virginia’s current district lines were drawn by the Virginia Supreme Court.
Right now, Virginia is represented by six Democrats and five Republicans in the U.S. House, a fair reflection of the commonwealth’s electorate. But that could soon change.
If voters approve of the Democrats’ newly proposed House district map, Southwest Virginia would likely be the only area in the commonwealth that has a Republican member in the U.S. House of Representatives, while ten Democrats would represent everywhere else.
In the last U.S. House election, 51 percent of Virginia voters voted Democrat, and nearly 48 percent voted Republican.
“Do you think that a 10-Democrat-and-a-one-Republican map is fair to close to half of Virginians who have not voted Democrat in recent elections?” reporter Nick Minock asked Democratic State Senator Dave Marsden.
“Well, as you know, the whole purpose of this is to respond to what the President has initiated in Republican dominating states,” said Marsden. “And if you lie down in front of a truck, you get run over, so you better fight back.”
“What we’re trying to do is save democracy right now,” Democratic Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell told Minock on Friday. “Virginia’s having to step up and fight back for what Texas, Missouri, and North Carolina and eventually Florida looks like in April are going to do to us, and basically they’re trying to silence Virginia’s voice in Congress.”
FFX Now (“Proposed redistricting map splits Fairfax County into five Congressional districts“):
Party leaders rolled out a map that’s projected to give Democrats an advantage in 10 of Virginia’s 11 Congressional districts, and as expected, much of that comes at the expense of Northern Virginia — the bluest part of the state.
Fairfax County alone, which is currently covered by the 8th, 10th and 11th Congressional districts, would be split into five new districts under the proposed map. Most of them would spread far out west, with one reaching as far as Shenandoah County.
Despite concerns about diluting representation for Northern Virginia voters, given the political differences between the urbanizing region and more rural parts of the state, it’s all part of a process of “leveling the playing field,” Senate President pro tempore L. Louise Lucas (D-18) told reporters Thursday.
“These are not ordinary times, and Virginia will not sit on the sidelines while it happens,” she said. “We made a promise to level the playing field, and today, we’re keeping our promise … We said 10-1 and we meant it, and we are proud to deliver a map that stands up for democracy.”
House Speaker Don Scott (D-88), who represents the same Portsmouth area as Lucas, noted that Republicans in Texas, North Carolina and Missouri have heeded President Donald Trump’s call for GOP-led states to redraw their Congressional districts ahead of this November’s midterm elections.
“We’re putting [the maps] out in the open and allowing them to be debated the way they should be in a democracy,” Scott said. “We’re going to leave it up to the Virginia voters. Maps are ready, Virginia’s ready.”
Here’s the projected outcome of all this:
Obviously, there is some risk for Democrats here in that the margins in several heavily blue districts would shrink considerably. Still, going from six likely Democratic seats to ten is quite the coup.
While the image quality is a bit subpar, WDBJ CBS7 provides a useful comparison of the two maps:
We’ve gone from district lines that reasonably track county lines to something that’s quite obviously gerrymandered.
This is all a gross violation of the Virginia Constitution, which, thanks to an amendment a few years back, mandates that the lines be drawn by an independent commission rather than partisan actors. In order for this to go into effect, Virginia voters will have to amend the Commonwealth’s Constitution to allow it.
The process of mid-decade redistricting requires a formal amendment to Virginia’s constitution. HJ4 would give the General Assembly the authority to modify Congressional districts at any time before Oct. 31, 2030, shifting that power away from a bipartisan redistricting commission established in 2020.
Both the House of Delegates and the state Senate have passed the bill, and it was signed into law by Gov. Abigail Spanberger this morning (Friday). In order to take effect, however, voters must approve the amendment in an election tentatively scheduled for April.
Whether Virginia will be allowed to hold that special election remains uncertain. A Tazewell County judge ruled last month that Democrats failed to follow the proper procedure for a last-minute redrawing of the maps for 2026 — a decision that will soon be taken up by the state’s Supreme Court.
One suspects that the courts will ultimately allow the amendment and the resultant gerrymander. The US Supreme Court allowed California’s similar effort to go through earlier in the week.
This is, of course, all wildly undemocratic. Not only does this map not even coming close to mirroring the partisan leanings of Virginians, but it undermines the whole concept of the House of Representatives, which is supposed to represent local interests. Splitting Fairfax County (which leans heavily Democratic) into five different Congressional Districts is an absolute abomination.
At the same time, it would be foolish for Democrats to unilaterally disarm in this fight. As noted, President Trump himself has urged red states to create more Republican seats to forestall his losing the already-slim majority in the midterms. Given the stakes at hand, Democrats could hardly not follow suit.
Nonetheless, a bipartisan arms race to disenfranchise the citizenry is less than ideal.
