Redistricting has been a controversial topic in Virginia due to allegations of

gerrymandering Gerrymandering, ( , originally ) defined in the contexts of Representative democracy, representative electoral systems, is the political manipulation of Boundary delimitation, electoral district boundaries to advantage a Political party, pa ...

. In the 2017 Virginia General Assembly, all of the redistricting reform bills were killed.

Constitutional requirements

The

Virginia Constitution The Constitution of the Commonwealth of Virginia is the document that defines and limits the powers of the state government and the basic rights of the citizens of the Commonwealth of Virginia. Like all other state constitutions, it is supreme ...

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 List of United States congressional districts, United States congressional district in the state of Virginia, taking in most of the area between Richmond, Virginia, Richmond and the North Carolina ...

. 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 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, Australian English, and New Zealand English) is the divergence of political attitudes away from the center, towards ideological extremes. Scholars distinguish between ideologi ...

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 houses 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-numbe ...

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 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, and the first elected legislative assembly in the New World. It was established on July 30, ...

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 Shearer Northam (born September 13, 1959) is an American physician and former politician who served as the 73rd governor of Virginia from 2018 to 2022. A pediatric Neurology, neurologist by occupation, he was an officer in the Medical Co ...

, and the Court instead appointed

University of California, Irvine The University of California, Irvine (UCI or UC Irvine) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Irvine, California, United States. One of the ten campuses of the University of California system, U ...

political science professor

Bernard Grofman Bernard Norman Grofman (born December 2, 1944) is a political scientist at the University of California, Irvine. He is an expert on redistricting and has been a special master on several district map redrawings. From the University of Chicago he ...

to serve as

special master In the law of the United States, a special master is an 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 judge as to the dispositi ...

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 party, politica ...

commission that is not polarized. Member organizations include the

League of Women Voters The League of Women Voters (LWV) is a nonpartisan American nonprofit political organization. Founded in 1920, its ongoing major activities include Voter registration, registering voters, providing voter information, boosting voter turnout and adv ...

of Virginia,

AARP AARP, formerly the American Association of Retired Persons, is an interest group in the United States focusing on issues affecting those 50 and older. The organization, which is headquartered in Washington, D.C., said it had more than 38 ...

of Virginia, OneVirginia2021, the Virginia

Chamber of Commerce A chamber of commerce, or board of trade, is a form of business network. For example, a local organization of businesses whose goal is to further the interests of businesses. Business owners in towns and cities form these local societies to a ...

and the Virginia Organizing Project. Governor

Bob McDonnell Robert Francis McDonnell (born June 15, 1954) is an American politician, attorney, businessman, academic administrator, and former military officer who served as the 71st governor of Virginia from 2010 to 2014. He is a member of the Republica ...

'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 think tank based in Washington, D.C., that researches government, politics, economics, and social welfare ...

. In January 2015, Republican State Senator Jill Holtzman Vogel of Winchester and Democratic State Senator Louise Lucas 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".

Virginia Redistricting Commission

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 created 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 on November 3, 2020. The commission failed to agree on maps for the new districts, so in accordance with the Virginia Constitution, the Supreme Court took over responsibility from the group and completed the redistricting process in December 2021 with the help of two court-appointed special masters.

References

External links

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