Governor called referendum after president urged GOP-led states to redraw maps to protect House majority
Voters in Virginia on Tuesday approved new congressional maps intended to boost Democrats’ chances of retaking the House of Representatives, in the latest blow to Donald Trump’s effort to use mid-decade redistricting to preserve his control of Congress.
The tit-for-tat redistricting battle began last year after Trump pressed Texas’s Republican-controlled legislature to redraw that state’s congressional maps in a bid to oust as many as five Democratic House lawmakers in the November midterm elections.
California voters retaliated by approving new maps that could flip five Republican-held seats, and in Virginia, Abigail Spanberger, the newly elected Democratic governor, backed an effort to redraw her state’s maps following her January inauguration. Tuesday’s referendum could help Democrats win four additional House seats in November’s midterm elections.
Bills have been brought up several times to make district mapping non-partisan, and/or by 3rd party independent agencies. Usually Dems bring them up and republicans vote them down or sabotage them in any way they can.
The process of approving such a process would be partisan, and agreeing on a notion of non-partisanship would be partisan. Anything that would budge the balance of power from where it is would be called partisan. We’re so far down the partisan hole.