Virginia’s flawed redistricting process is still better than chicanery in Texas, elsewhere

Draft maps are presented at a meeting of the Virginia Redistricting Commission in October 2021. (Photo by Ned Oliver/Virginia Mercury)

Here’s something I almost never say: Virginia got it right.

I’m referring to the bipartisan redistricting commission, a process the commonwealth completed for the first time in 2021. Voters had earlier approved a constitutional amendment that had removed the line-drawing from legislators alone. It helped prevent the partisan nonsense now playing out in Texas, too.

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The Virginia panel didn’t eradicate politics from redistricting; that’s nearly impossible. The process had flaws. But the decennial exercise became more transparent, less deferential to incumbents and didn’t provide the majority party in the General Assembly a bludgeon to wield against the minority.

Virginia is one of just 10 states where a commission has the “primary responsibility for drawing a plan for congressional districts,” according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

The eight citizen-members and eight legislators in Virginia were equally split between Democrats and Republicans, and the composition produced constant gridlock. After the stalemates, the Virginia Supreme Court was tasked with overseeing the mapmaking for the state House of Delegates, Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives.

“This was supposed to be bipartisan collaboration on getting the work done, and it ended up being partisan,” state Sen. Mamie Locke, D-Hampton and a commission member, told me Wednesday.

Debates ensued over such routine issues as which university could be trusted to supply unbiased data. Members even named co-chairs so neither party would have the upper hand in that role.

Still, the system in Virginia precludes the cowardice and chicanery we’re now witnessing in the Lone Star State. The spectacle in Texas is undemocratic, unseemly and unfair.

There, gutless GOP state legislators are taking the rare step of attempting to reopen the redistricting process mid-decade, all to try to gain five more seats in the narrowly split U.S. House of Representatives. Obsequious Republican legislators are doing this at the behest of their “Dear Leader,” President Donald Trump.

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You don’t have to resort to such uncommon tactics if your party’s policies are popular. At Trump’s urging, Republicans gutted Medicaid and food assistance to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy this year.

Democratic state legislators in Texas, in response, fled the state to prevent a quorum. Meanwhile, states with Democratic governors, including Gavin Newsom in California, have threatened to retaliate by rejiggering their own lines and gaining even more Democratic seats in Congress. It was a rare moment of reciprocity by Democratic leaders nationwide.

Other states with Republican governors, including Indiana, are considering whether they’ll join the fray.

This is madness. It’s exactly the “rigging” of elections that Trump has long claimed he opposed (and which he’s lied about). He has no problem, though, if he’s the beneficiary.

Which brings me back to the commonwealth. As frustrating as the constant deadlock was in 2021, Virginia redistricting members didn’t want to throw out the Sharpies with the cartographers just yet.

Mackenzie Babichenko, the Republican citizen co-chair of the panel in 2021, liked the transparency and citizen input. However, the lack of a natural tiebreaker, such as having an odd number of members on the panel, meant there would be frequent hurdles.

“I learned how political this process actually is,” she told me by email Wednesday, “and that lines can be drawn pursuant to neutral criteria, in full compliance with the law, in many different ways, and definitely in ways that favor one political party or the other.”

“Additionally, we need to incorporate our independents,” Babichenko added.” Virginia is home to a lot of people who are single-issue voters, independent, non-partisan or not engaged in politics at all. Those individuals deserve to have their voices represented.”

Babichenko told me rules about not holding partisan elective office will disqualify her from serving again as a citizen member, because she was elected as the Hanover County commonwealth’s attorney in 2023.

The Code of Virginia also suggests mid-decade convening of the commission is prohibited.  

Complaints still arise years after the 2021 process.

Del. Marcus Simon, D-Falls Church, was a member of the panel. He later resigned, but he told me he’s been since reappointed. Simon said the maps the state Supreme Court produced should’ve hewed more to Democrats having an advantage because of recent voting trends in this purple state.

“The process failed … it didn’t result in a map” from the panel itself, Simon told me.

Given some of our state’s obvious shortcomings, I’d characterize the commission differently.

After all, Virginia is the only state where governors can’t run for a second consecutive term. It means the chief executive can advocate policies that he doesn’t have to pay a price for politically.

When it comes to restoring the civil rights of released felons, including voting, Virginia is among the worst. The gubernatorial prerogative is based on racism and dates to the early 1900s.

Anyone who earns $17,000 or more in income is lumped into the same tax bracket. The inequity is appalling. The state’s longtime underfunding of schools is a perpetual embarrassment – especially since we’re among the leaders annually among the top states to do business.

So, considering all of that, I’ll take the imperfect system of redistricting we began four years ago. Agreement might continue to be fraught with roadblocks in the future.

That’s far, far better than the insanity happening in Texas.

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