Overview of redistricting in Virginia
Redistricting has been a controversial topic in Virginia due to allegations of gerrymandering. In the 2017 Virginia General Assembly, all of the redistricting reform bills were killed. [1]
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Redistricting has been a controversial topic in Virginia due to allegations of gerrymandering. In the 2017 Virginia General Assembly, all of the redistricting reform bills were killed. [1]
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." [2]
The Republican Party lost one of its seats in Congress when a federal court redrew Virginia's 4th congressional district. 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. [3] This ruling allowed Democrat Donald McEachin to represent the 4th District in the newly convened U.S. House of Representatives. [4]
Delegate Mark L. Cole noted that even without gerrymandering, political polarization 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. [5]
On 1 March 2017, the U.S. Supreme Court sent a case involving 12 Virginia House of Delegates districts back to a lower court to rule on 11 of those districts. [6] Richmond Circuit Court Judge W. Reilly Marchant ruled that the constitutionality of the map was "fairly debatable" and therefore upheld it. [7] 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. [8] The Court gave the Virginia legislature 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, and the Court instead appointed University of California, Irvine political science professor Bernard Grofman to serve as special master to oversee the redistricting process. [8]
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." [9] The Redistricting Coalition of Virginia proposes either an independent commission or a bipartisan 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. [10] Governor Bob McDonnell'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. [11]
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. [12]
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. [13]
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". [14]
The Virginia General Assembly passed HJ 615 [15] in 2019 and SJ 18 [16] 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. [17] 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.
In representative democracies, gerrymandering 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 manipulation may involve "cracking" or "packing". Gerrymandering can also be used to protect incumbents. Wayne Dawkins describes it as politicians picking their voters instead of voters picking their politicians.
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. The General Assembly is a bicameral body consisting of a lower house, the Virginia House of Delegates, with 100 members, and an upper house, the Senate of Virginia, with 40 members. Senators serve terms of four years, and Delegates serve two-year terms. Combined, the General Assembly consists of 140 elected representatives from an equal number of constituent districts across the commonwealth. The House of Delegates is presided over by the Speaker of the House, while the Senate is presided over by the Lieutenant Governor of Virginia. The House and Senate each elect a clerk and sergeant-at-arms. The Senate of Virginia's clerk is known as the "Clerk of the Senate".
Redistricting in the United States is the process of drawing electoral district boundaries. For the United States House of Representatives, and state legislatures, redistricting occurs after each decennial census.
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Virginia is currently divided into 11 congressional districts, each represented by a member of the United States House of Representatives. The death of Rep. Donald McEachin on November 28, 2022, left the 4th congressional district seat empty. Following the results of a special election to fill his seat on February 21, 2023, Jennifer McClellan made history by becoming Virginia's first black congresswoman.
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In the United States, a redistricting commission is a body, other than the usual state legislative bodies, established to draw electoral district boundaries. Generally the intent is to avoid gerrymandering, or at least the appearance of gerrymandering, by specifying a nonpartisan or bipartisan body to comprise the commission drawing district boundaries.
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Mark Lanze Cole is an American politician of the Republican Party. From 2002 until 2022 he was a member of the Virginia House of Delegates. He represented the 88th district in the Virginia Piedmont, made up of parts of Fauquier, Spotsylvania and Stafford Counties, and the City of Fredericksburg, Virginia. Cole did not run for re-election in 2021.
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Gerrymandering is the practice of setting boundaries of electoral districts to favor specific political interests within legislative bodies, often resulting in districts with convoluted, winding boundaries rather than compact areas. The term "gerrymandering" was coined after a review of Massachusetts's redistricting maps of 1812 set by Governor Elbridge Gerry noted that one of the districts looked like a mythical salamander.
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OneVirginia2021 is an American civic non-profit organization founded to advocate for a non-partisan redistricting of the Commonwealth of Virginia. The group was founded in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2013 and is currently based in Richmond, Virginia.
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