All about 'Fairness' with VA's Redistricting Rush
Voters will be asked in April to approve a 'temporary' constitutional amendment to eliminate Republican seats in order to 'restore fairness.'
The Virginia Democrat-majority assembly’s bid to gerrymander some four or five more of congressional seats in their favor has landed — with a thud.
The vaguely worded constitutional amendment referendum, HB 1384, asks Commonwealth citizens if they would “temporarily” allow a redistricting that would wipe out Republican-leaning congressional seats to “restore fairness” in the November midterm election.
The bill calls for a special election on April 21 that says:
“Question: Should the Constitution of Virginia be amended to allow the General Assembly to temporarily adopt new congressional districts to restore fairness in the upcoming elections, while ensuring Virginia’s standard redistricting process resumes for all future redistricting after the 2030 census?”
Republicans have already said they will continue to challenge whether the Democrats provided proper legal notice of the referendum, as required under statute.
Now the “fairness” language in HB 1384, asking for a “temporary” gerrymander authority to redistrict the current 5-6 (R-D) congressional maps to wipe out some four or five Republican-leaning congressional districts, has raised new talk of legal fights.
Former House of Delegates member Tim Anderson, in a video comment posted on his X platform account, said when Democrats say “restore fairness” in the bill, they are alleging that the current re-redistricting commission (approved by over 65% of the electorate in 2020) is suddenly unfair.
“No court has found that,” he said. “Nobody’s even alleged our current lines are unfair.” And so, to use the word fairness in the referendum “is fatal, subject to challenge,” he continued. “Let’s see who is going to step up [and sue]. If somebody doesn’t, I will.”
“We have a law on the books that says the maps can’t be rigged for one party,” noted reporter Graham Moomaw of the Richmonder in a social media post.
“The General Assembly approved that as a general rule that applies regardless of who’s drawing the maps.”
VA statute 24.2-304.04 also says congressional districts shall be composed of “compact territory and shall be drawn employing one or more standard numerical measures of individual and average district compactness, both statewide and district by district.”
The Democrat majority assembly may also be in a hurry to act before the Supreme Court issues its ruling in Louisiana v Calais*, which may either narrow or do away with racially-drawn districts as unconstitutional violations of the 14th Amendment.
The other three Constitutional amendment bills in the assembly (allowing abortions in the third trimester, codifying gay marriage, and restoring some felons’ voting rights) will instead be put forward on the November midterm ballot.
The Republican party of Virginia (RPV) has not decided on a new chairman to replace Sen. Mark Peake (R-Lynchburg) who resigned after the 2025 election results; official actions and reactions are unclear at this point.
Anderson was among many legislators (former and current) challenging the wording of HB 1384 today, if not providing droll commentary about the language in the bill.
Fundamentally, he added, you can’t say in a Constitutional amendment question that the current congressional map configuration is “unfair when it’s clearly not.” #