Virginia Democrats Barely Get Their Gerrymander Referendum Passed, but a Virginia Judge Just Ruled it Unconstitutional

The referendum passed 51% to 49% in blue-as-ice Virginia. That doesn't sound like a coming Blue Wave to me.

But it did pass. And Democrats will use this power to increase their congressional delegation from six to five to 10 to one.

But a judge says hold on -- this was all unconstitutional.

Former Virginia attorney general and Homeland Security official Ken Cuccinelli II posted on X Wednesday about the gerrymandered map, "UPDATE on referendum lawsuits: The Tazewell Circuit Court just ruled the referendum unconstitutional. The Judge entered an injunction blocking certification of the election & denied a motion to stay pending appeal. A final order will be entered once drafted, & it will be immediately appealed."

The new map would almost certainly hand ten out of eleven congressional districts to Democrat control. This would impact not only Virginia, therefore, but the Republican-Democrat balance of power in the U.S. Congress.

Cuccinelli had already predicted that the election results last night were not the final say on Virginia Democrats' gerrymandering. He noted that the "[f]irst passage was invalid," as the "amendment was taken up during a special session convened in 2024 for budget purposes. The General Assembly's own call to the Governor (under Art. IV, §6 and Art. V, §5) and its governing resolution (HJR 6001) limited the session's scope. Expanding it to include a constitutional amendment on redistricting required a two-thirds vote that never occurred." In light of this, a Tazewell County judge ruled that this action was "void, ab initio."

So to even vote this into a referendum, they needed a two-thirds majority vote, which they never even tried to get, so the referendum was never legally before the public.

There are additional procedural defects, which have to do with timing and so bore me, but you can click the link to read about those.

And finally, as a challenge to the proposed map, "Art. II, §6 requires that 'every electoral district shall be composed of contiguous and compact territory.' The proposed congressional maps violate this contiguity requirement (rather badly)," Cuccinelli wrote.

The Democrats created a giant lobster-shaped district to mix their ultra-blue northeatern voters with red voters in the south and west of the state. It's barely "contiguous" and not "compact" at all, sprawling, as it does, across half the state, a three hour drive from one end to the other.

posted by Disinformation Expert Ace at 06:10 PM

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