In November 2024, 47% of Virginia voters cast ballots for Republican congressional candidates. Under the map Virginia Democrats tried to push through, those voters would have been left without fair representation.
To get it done, Democrats bypassed a bipartisan redistricting commission that Virginia voters had specifically created in 2020 to end partisan map-drawing. They drafted the new map behind closed doors. They passed a constitutional amendment on Oct. 31, 2025, even though early voting for the general election had been underway since Sept. 19 – violating the state constitution’s requirement that an intervening election occur between the two legislative votes. They missed the requirement that amendments be posted publicly 90 days before a vote. And they put a ballot question before voters asking whether they wanted to “restore fairness” – language a circuit court judge called “flagrantly misleading.”
Every step of this process required ignoring a rule or deceiving a voter.
That is not a party making a policy argument. That is a party that has decided winning at any cost is more important than following the rules.
Dems Have a Voter Problem. Gerrymandering Was Never Going To Fix It
In November 2024, 47% of Virginia voters cast ballots for Republican congressional candidates. Under the map Virginia Democrats tried to push through, those voters would have been left without fair representation.
To get it done, Democrats bypassed a bipartisan redistricting commission that Virginia voters had specifically created in 2020 to end partisan map-drawing. They drafted the new map behind closed doors. They passed a constitutional amendment on Oct. 31, 2025, even though early voting for the general election had been underway since Sept. 19 – violating the state constitution’s requirement that an intervening election occur between the two legislative votes. They missed the requirement that amendments be posted publicly 90 days before a vote. And they put a ballot question before voters asking whether they wanted to “restore fairness” – language a circuit court judge called “flagrantly misleading.”
Every step of this process required ignoring a rule or deceiving a voter.
That is not a party making a policy argument. That is a party that has decided winning at any cost is more important than following the rules.