Redistricting in Virginia
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Redistricting in Virginia has been a controversial topic due to allegations of
gerrymandering In representative democracies, gerrymandering (, originally ) is the political manipulation of electoral district boundaries with the intent to create undue advantage for a party, group, or socioeconomic class within the constituency. The m ...
. In the 2017 Virginia General Assembly, all of the redistricting reform bills were killed.


Constitutional requirements

The Virginia Constitution states:
"Members of the House of Representatives of the United States and members of the Senate and of the House of Delegates of the General Assembly shall be elected from electoral districts established by the General Assembly. Every electoral district shall be composed of contiguous and compact territory and shall be so constituted as to give, as nearly as is practicable, representation in proportion to the population of the district. The General Assembly shall reapportion the Commonwealth into electoral districts in accordance with this section in the year 2011 and every ten years thereafter."


Congressional districts

The Republican Party lost one of its seats in Congress when a federal court redrew
Virginia's 4th congressional district Virginia's fourth congressional district is a United States congressional district in the state of Virginia, taking in most of the area between Richmond and Chesapeake. In Hampton Roads, it covers all or part of the counties of Charles City, ...
. A suit claimed the district had been racially gerrymandered to give an advantage to white Republicans. The ruling in that case found that the General Assembly in 2012 unconstitutionally packed too many black voters into Bobby Scott's district, weakening the clout of blacks in nearby districts. This ruling allowed Democrat
Donald McEachin Aston Donald McEachin ( ; October 10, 1961 – November 28, 2022) was an American politician and lawyer who served as the U.S. representative for Virginia's 4th congressional district from 2017 until his death in 2022. His district was based in ...
to represent the 4th District in the newly convened U.S. House of Representatives.


House of Delegates districts

Delegate Mark L. Cole noted that even without gerrymandering,
political polarization Political polarization (spelled ''polarisation'' in British English) is the divergence of political attitudes away from the center, towards ideological extremes. Most discussions of polarization in political science consider polarization in the ...
will exist because of the stark political differences between urban and rural areas, which makes drawing competitive districts impossible in some regions of the state. On 1 March 2017, the U.S. Supreme Court sent a case involving 12
Virginia House of Delegates The Virginia House of Delegates is one of the two parts of the Virginia General Assembly, the other being the Senate of Virginia. It has 100 members elected for terms of two years; unlike most states, these elections take place during odd-number ...
districts back to a lower court to rule on 11 of those districts. Richmond Circuit Court Judge W. Reilly Marchant ruled that the constitutionality of the map was "fairly debatable" and therefore upheld it. In June 2018, the
U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia The United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia (in case citations, E.D. Va.) is one of two United States district courts serving the Commonwealth of Virginia. It has jurisdiction over the Northern Virginia, Hampton ...
found that the 11 districts unconstitutionally concentrated black voters, depriving them of representation. The Court gave the
Virginia legislature The Virginia General Assembly is the legislative body of the Commonwealth of Virginia, the oldest continuous law-making body in the Western Hemisphere, the first elected legislative assembly in the New World, and was established on July 30, 1619 ...
until October 30, 2018 to submit a new map, but the Republican-majority Assembly was unable to agree on a map that would also be supported by Democratic Governor
Ralph Northam Ralph (pronounced ; or ,) is a male given name of English, Scottish and Irish origin, derived from the Old English ''Rædwulf'' and Radulf, cognate with the Old Norse ''Raðulfr'' (''rað'' "counsel" and ''ulfr'' "wolf"). The most common forms ...
, and the Court instead appointed
University of California, Irvine The University of California, Irvine (UCI or UC Irvine) is a public land-grant research university in Irvine, California. One of the ten campuses of the University of California system, UCI offers 87 undergraduate degrees and 129 graduate and p ...
political science professor Bernard Grofman to serve as
special master In the law of the United States, a special master is generally a subordinate official appointed by a judge to ensure judicial orders are followed, or in the alternative, to hear evidence on behalf of the judge and make recommendations to the jud ...
to oversee the redistricting process.


Proposed reforms

Article II, section 6 on apportionment states, "Members of the ... Senate and of the House of Delegates of the General Assembly shall be elected from electoral districts established by the General Assembly. Every electoral district shall be composed of contiguous and compact territory and shall be so constituted as to give, as nearly as is practicable, representation in proportion to the population of the district." The Redistricting Coalition of Virginia proposes either an independent commission or a
bipartisan Bipartisanship, sometimes referred to as nonpartisanship, is a political situation, usually in the context of a two-party system (especially those of the United States and some other western countries), in which opposing political parties find co ...
commission that is not polarized. Member organizations include the League of Women Voters of Virginia, AARP of Virginia, OneVirginia2021, the Virginia Chamber of Commerce and the Virginia Organizing Project. Governor
Bob McDonnell Robert Francis McDonnell (born June 15, 1954) is an American attorney, businessman, politician, and former military officer who served as the 71st governor of Virginia from 2010 to 2014. His career ended after his corruption scandal and convic ...
's Independent Bipartisan Advisory Commission on Redistricting for the Commonwealth of Virginia made its report on April 1, 2011. It made two recommendations for each state legislative house that showed maps of districts more compact and contiguous than those adopted by the General Assembly. In 2011, the Virginia College and University Redistricting Competition was organized by Professors Michael McDonald of George Mason University and Quentin Kidd of Christopher Newport University. About 150 students on sixteen teams from thirteen schools submitted plans for legislative and U.S. congressional districts. They created districts more compact than the General Assembly's efforts. The "Division 1" maps conformed with the Governor's Executive Order, and did not address electoral competition or representational fairness. In addition to the criteria of contiguity, equipopulation, the federal Voting Rights Act and communities of interest in the existing city and county boundaries, "Division 2" maps in the competition did incorporate considerations of electoral competition and representational fairness. Judges for the cash award prizes were Thomas Mann of the Brookings Institution and Norman Ornstein of the
American Enterprise Institute The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, known simply as the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), is a center-right Washington, D.C.–based think tank that researches government, politics, economics, and social welfare. A ...
. In January 2015, Republican State Senator Jill Holtzman Vogel of Winchester and Democratic State Senator
Louise Lucas Lillie Louise Lucas ( Boone; born January 22, 1944) is an American politician serving as a Virginia state senator, representing the 18th District in the southeast of the state since 1992. Democrats won a majority of seats in the 2019 Virginia ...
of Portsmouth sponsored a Senate Joint Resolution to establish additional criteria for the Virginia Redistricting Commission of four identified members of political parties, and three other independent public officials. The criteria began with respecting existing political boundaries, such as cities and towns, counties and magisterial districts, election districts and voting precincts. Districts are to be established on the basis of population, in conformance with federal and state laws and court cases, including those addressing racial fairness. The territory is to be contiguous and compact, without oddly shaped boundaries. The commission is prohibited from using political data or election results to favor either political party or incumbent. It passed with a two-thirds majority of 27 to 12 in the Senate, and was then referred to committee in the House of Delegates. In 2015, at ''Vesilind v. Virginia State Board of Elections'' in a Virginia state court, plaintiffs sought to overturn the General Assembly's redistricting in five House of Delegate and six state Senate districts as violations of both the Virginia and U.S. Constitutions because they failed to represent populations in "continuous and compact territory". The Virginia General Assembly passed HJ 615 in 2019 and SJ 18 in 2020 to amend the state constitution to form a redistricting commission for the 2021 redistricting process. In accordance with Virginia's process for amending the state constitution, this proposed amendment had to pass through the General Assembly in two, concurrent years before being passed on to Virginia voters, who will vote on this referendum in November 2020. The amendment, if added to the Virginia Constitution, will create a sixteen-member commission, composed of eight citizens, two Senate Democrats, two Senate Republicans, two House Democrats, and two House Republicans, to redistrict Virginia, instead of the General Assembly. It will also cement requirements for commission transparency and historic civil rights protections for racial and ethnic minorities in the Virginia Constitution. If the commission cannot agree or if the General Assembly rejects the commission's map twice, the Virginia Supreme Court will redraw the districts in accordance with existing standard, likely with the help of a Special Master. The amendment passed with 65.69% of the vote.


See also

* Elections in Virginia *
2020 United States census The United States census of 2020 was the twenty-fourth decennial United States census. Census Day, the reference day used for the census, was April 1, 2020. Other than a pilot study during the 2000 census, this was the first U.S. census to of ...
*
2020 United States redistricting cycle The 2020 United States redistricting cycle is in progress following the completion of the 2020 United States census. In all fifty states, various bodies are re-drawing state legislative districts. States that are apportioned more than one se ...


References


External links

* * {{Virginia Redistricting in the United States Politics of Virginia