Virginia’s Supreme Court greenlit a redistricting referendum for spring, handing Democrats a small win in the nationwide partisan fight to redraw congressional districts ahead of the midterm elections.
The legality of Virginia’s process is still being litigated.
The April 21 special election will present a ballot measure that asks voters to give the legislature redistricting power through the 2030 election, overriding Virginia’s current nonpartisan commission.
Early voting on the referendum is scheduled to start on March 6.
The map favors Democrats in all but one of the state’s 11 House districts.
The moves in Virginia are part of a nationwide redistricting battle.
President Trump urged redistricting in GOP-run states to get more Republican-leaning districts and help the party hold onto its razor-thin House majority. Texas was the first to redraw its maps.
Then, Democratic states led by California responded in kind.
Virginia’s Democratic-controlled state legislature previously approved a measure to amend the state Constitution to allow for redistricting, then scheduled the April special election.
“Today’s order is a huge win for Virginia voters,” Dan Gottlieb, a spokesperson for pro-redistricting group Virginians for Fair Elections, said in a statement. “The Court made it clear that nothing in this case stops the April 21 referendum from moving forward and that Virginians will have the final say.”
Virginians for Fair Maps, which opposes the redistricting push, has said that “Virginians came together to pass bipartisan redistricting reform — a process that took the power to draw maps out of politicians’ hands. Now, politicians in Richmond want to undo that progress.”
Virginia voters approved an amendment in 2020 that established the state’s bipartisan redistricting commission to draw maps. The current push would temporarily override that commission.
No Gerrymandering Virginia announced an initiative Friday to urge voters to oppose the new map. The group includes George Allen, a Republican who served as Virginia governor and as a U.S. Senator.
“Thanks to the strong recent vote of the people, Virginia has much better standards of fairness than this,” he said in a statement. “We must stand above these sorts of political election-rigging schemes.”
Republicans have argued that Democrats did not follow the rules when the legislature approved the amendments, in which a Virginia judge ruled in the GOP’s favor.
But the state’s highest court is still weighing the case that attempted to block state Democrats from mid-decade redistricting.
Because of this, the court could void the ballot measure after ballots have been cast.
Democrats framed the amendment effort as a response to Republican-led mid-decade redistricting across states such as Texas, North Carolina, Ohio and Missouri, which could produce GOP gains.
In California, voters approved a new House map last fall that gives Democrats up to five new seats.
• Mary McCue Bell can be reached at mbell@washingtontimes.com.
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