Virginia’s Gerrymander

The legal battle over Virginia’s partisan redistricting is shaping up as a test of one of America’s first state constitutions, in the drafting of which Framers like Madison, Jefferson, and George Mason had a hand.* Faced with a 21st-century power grab by the Democrats — an attempt in effect to disenfranchise Old Dominion Republicans to tip control of Congress — will a state charter predating the Declaration of Independence preserve the rights of all Virginians?In Tuesday’s referendum, 51.4 percent of voters agreed to amend the state constitution to redraw voting maps. The plan aims to trim four Republicans from Virginia’s House delegation, currently split between six Democrats and five from the GOP. The ink was hardly dry on the vote results, though, when a state trial judge barred the referendum from going into effect. The validity of the referendum will be argued Monday before the commonwealth’s supreme court.Republicans are contesting the claim of the amendment’s backers that the measure was needed to “restore fairness in the upcoming elections.” What’s fair, the GOP asks, about making Virginia’s House delegation 91 percent Democrats in a state where but 51 percent of voters belong to that party? Some 30 percent of Virginians are Republicans, and 18 percent are independents. In 2024, 46 percent of Virginians cast ballots for President Trump.Did the referendum comply with Virginia’s legal requirements for amending the state constitution? Judge Jack Hurley of the Tazewell County Circuit Court held Wednesday that the measure breached Article XII of the charter. That article mandates that amendments be proposed in one legislative session and then again “after the next general election,” Judge Hurley avers, a procedure that was not followed. He calls the amendment’s text “flagrantly misleading.”Will Virginia’s high court take as clear-eyed a view? The tribunal’s composition lacks an obvious partisan slant. Its seven justices are chosen by the legislature. The court’s chief justice, Cleo Powell, and two other justices were elected to the court by a legislature divided between the two parties. One justice, Junius Felton, was selected when Democrats controlled both houses. Three justices were selected when Republicans controlled both legislative houses. When these judges expound the state charter to weigh the “fairness” of the gerrymander, they will contend with a bedrock text of American history. Virginia’s Declaration of Rights, a precursor of the state charter, dates to June 12, 1776. The first of its kind in America, the declaration was drafted by Mason with Madison, and influenced Jefferson’s Declaration of July 4. Its text abides, with some modifications, in Article I of Virginia’s constitution.The Old Dominion, to be sure, has not always held to the ideals of its own constitution. In 1902, during the Jim Crow era, a convention at Richmond drafted a new charter that, among other things, codified racial segregation. The 1902 charter, too, disenfranchised black Virginians, who made up some 36 percent of the population. That denial of representation to a large segment of voters echoes, to some degree, in the Democrats’ gerrymander.The Article I provisions of Virginia’s constitution caution against the kind of chicanery undertaken by today’s Democrats. “All men are by nature equally free and independent and have certain inherent rights,” section one asserts, which “they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity.” The rights vouchsafed in the Virginia constitution, section 15 avers, “cannot be enjoyed save in a society where law is respected and due process is observed.”________* That would be like having Titian, Cezanne, and Picasso paint one’s kitchen.

Virginia’s Gerrymander

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