After a strategy shift, the Virginia Redistricting Commission spent its two meetings this week discussing guidance from legal teams about how to ensure legal compliance with the Voting Rights Act (VRA), and how to consider political subdivisions, communities of interest, and partisan equity.
Republican and Democratic legal teams shared different analyses of how to ensure compliance with section two of the VRA, which requires that districts not dilute the voting power of protected minorities. Democratic legal counsel argued that map drawers must create majority-minority districts where possible including through coalitions of minority groups.
Republican counsel said that while creating those districts was permissible and even likely to happen, explicitly instructing the map drawers to consider race fell outside the legal criteria under which race can be considered, violating the Equal Protection Clause.
The commission debated the issue for hours across two meetings on Monday and Wednesday and defeated three proposals to say the map drawers “shall,” “may,” or “shall provide where practicable,” the majority-minority districts.
Senator Ryan McDougle (R-Hanover) summarized the debate over the “shall” language Monday: “This motion specifically means that we’re going to get sued one way or the other — one counsel is saying we specifically can’t do this, one counsel is saying we specifically have to do this.”
Delegate Marcus Simon (D-Fairfax) said Wednesday that he had been skeptical of the effort to amend the Virginia Constitution creating the redistricting commission, and said that protecting minority districts was a key reason he was on the commission. He said that while Virginia law is already clear about the “shall” language, it was important for the commission to emphasize that in its guidance to map drawers.
He warned that failing to protect minority voters could lead to the maps being voted down in the House of Delegates. He referred to former commission member Senator Steve Newman’s (R-Bedford) repeated warning that commissioners needed to consider that the General Assembly will vote on the maps, and that commissioners needed to keep that in mind as the final destination.
“I’ll get back to the ghost of Senator Newman and his ‘landing the plane.’ This is going to be a big issue for us when we see these maps,” Simon, who is the House Democratic Caucus Secretary, said.
On Wednesday, Republicans said there was no need to include further guidance that could place them in legal jeopardy since the guidance is already in the law. The final vote Wednesday split along party lines, so the commission will not provide further clarification to the map drawers on the issue. Although the debate was focused on how to comply with legal statutes, there are political ramifications to the decision, since minorities are assumed to often vote Democrat.
The commission unanimously agreed to several other guidance instructions to mapmakers, with both Republican and Democratic counsel in agreement on their recommendations to the council. The commission approved guidance that avoids dividing political subdivisions in most cases. The commission voted to place consideration of county and city lines on the same level of priority, followed by towns. It also approved guidance to map-drawers to preserve communities of interest. That information will be based on public comments which will be delivered to the commission by a vendor.
Additionally, the commission unanimously approved instructions to map drawers banning them from considering political data, although the commission can review the political data. Due to a lack of clear guidance from the commission, Democratic map-drawers already obtained incumbent addresses from a third-party while drawing Northern Virginia maps. Additionally, the Republican map drawer has said that while he didn’t consider incumbent addresses, his experience in past redistricting cycles helps him guess where some incumbents live. The commission said that districts, where political data was considered, must be clearly identified in the maps.
All that is a shift from a plan announced last week to consider draft maps of Eastern Virginia this week. On September 11, the commission announced a new strategy, where the commissioners would spend this week clarifying guidance to map-drawers. On September 20, the map-drawers will present House and Senate draft maps for the whole state.
“As we have done throughout this process, we have spent some time assessing where we are and what is ahead, and with the guidance of our legal counsel, have determined the Commission will be shifting gears as we reach the halfway mark,” Co-Chairs Greta Harris (D) and Mackenzie Babichenko (R) said in the announcement. “Some progress on these statewide maps can be made by following statutory criteria and our current guidance, but the map drawers need more specifics in order to complete the task. Given that our deadline is just a little over four weeks away, the time for those details is now.”
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Eric Burk is a reporter at The Virginia Star and The Star News Network. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Virginia State Capitol” by Martin Kraft CC BY-SA 3.0.
