Virginia Democrats’ gerrymandering stunt could still be overturned
by Editorial Board · The Washington TimesOPINION:
Democrats narrowly won Virginia’s redistricting fight at the ballot box last week, but the legal fight has just begun.
On Wednesday, a Tazewell County judge ruled that the proposed amendment and the referendum vote were unconstitutional, preventing election officials from certifying the results. On Monday, the Virginia Supreme Court is set to hear arguments in another case relating to the Democrats’ blatant power grab.
Democrats squeaked out a 3-point victory in the referendum, giving them 10 of the 11 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. The current map allocates six seats to Democrats and five to Republicans, more accurately representing the 52%-46% state split in the 2024 presidential election.
The language on the ballot initiative was purposely deceptive, asking voters to “restore fairness” by adopting new congressional districts that favored Democrats. Republicans were outspent on the initiative by a 10-1 margin, with heavy hitters such as former President Barack Obama making the pitch to voters, urging them to “push back against the Republicans” and vote yes on the referendum.
The process, too, was convoluted and rushed, aimed at getting the new map in place before the midterm elections this year. Republicans successfully argued that the first passage of the amendment was invalid because it was taken up during a special session convened in 2024 for budgetary purposes.
According to the Virginia Constitution, the motion to include the amendment during this session required a two-thirds vote that never occurred.
Moreover, the commonwealth’s constitution requires an amendment to be passed twice, with an election intervening between the first and second passage.
Here, the first passage occurred during an election cycle, not before an intervening one. Additionally, the amendment had to be submitted to voters “not sooner than 90 days after final passage by the General Assembly,” and the timeline from its second passage to the April 21 vote did not satisfy this requirement.
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“There’s some very basic processes in the constitution for amending the constitution that Democrats ignored,” former Republican Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli told CNN after the lower court ruled against the new maps. “They were ignoring the will of the people in how they brought this forward, and now we’re going to have this decided in the Virginia Supreme Court.”
Mr. Cuccinelli said he wouldn’t be surprised to see a 7-0 unanimous ruling throwing out the egregiously gerrymandered maps.
Four constitutional challenges to the referendum are making their way through the court system. Three of them challenge the amendment process itself.
A final ruling on the matter could be made by May.