Virginia Gerrymandering - Unconstitutional

News & Current Events
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In a major court victory for Virginia Republicans and fair-maps advocates, the Tazewell Circuit Court has ruled the Democrats’ redistricting referendum unconstitutional.

The judge has entered an injunction blocking certification of the narrow “Yes” victory and denied Democrats’ request for a stay pending appeal.

The development was announced on Wednesday afternoon by former Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II, who is leading the Election Transparency Initiative.

“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,” Cuccinelli wrote in a post on X.

This ruling means the ridiculous constitutional amendment, which would have allowed the Democrat-controlled General Assembly to immediately toss Virginia’s current balanced six-five congressional map and replace it with a heavily gerrymandered 10 Democrat to one Republican map, cannot be certified or take effect unless the Virginia Supreme Court overturns the decision on appeal.

The ballot measure asked voters, “Should the Constitution of Virginia be amended to allow the General Assembly to temporarily adopt new congressional districts to restore fairness in the upcoming elections, while ensuring Virginia’s standard redistricting process resumes for all future redistricting after the 2030 census?”

Republicans, including former Governor Glenn Youngkin, called the language deliberately deceptive.

Virginia currently operates under one of the fairest congressional maps in the nation, drawn by an independent bipartisan commission that voters overwhelmingly approved in 2020.

The Democrat-backed plan would have packed Republican voters into a single ultra-safe district while engineering 10 safe Democratic seats, helping Democrats gain 4 House seats heading into the midterms.

The referendum passed narrowly on Tuesday, with roughly 51.45% voting “Yes” and 48.55% voting “No,” driven by Democrats in Northern Virginia.

Republicans filed multiple lawsuits challenging the referendum.

Tazewell Circuit Court Judge Jack Hurley had previously issued injunctions blocking the referendum before the vote, but the Virginia Supreme Court stayed those orders, allowing voters to decide while reserving final judgment.

Now, the case will be appealed to the Virginia Supreme Court, which has already signaled it will review the constitutional questions quickly.

The Gateway Pundit will continue to monitor the Virginia Supreme Court for the next ruling and any updates on the final order from the Tazewell Circuit Court.
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Narrow “yes” victory

tells a lot about Virginia.

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That loss is a WIN! VA is nuts. Closing in on NYC.

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How open the left is about destroying the constitution and controlling the people is astounding!

My concern for Virginia is that the SC let it go to vote, and will uphold the gerrymandering as “voted for by the people”

The problem I see is, the votes are right along the representative line as it stands, 6 dem seats, 5 rep seats, restacking it to 10-1 is NOT going to represent the true will of the people.

Fingers crossed the SC will see the truth of that.

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That it took immense outside money ($80 million) and a rigged election (the ballot question stated a “yes” vote would ensure fair elections, without stating it would create 10 democrat districts to one Republican district that voting showed to be nearly a 50/50 split) to win by just over 1%.

My biggest issue was that the Republican party seemed disinterested in this vote, more so than the Governor race last November, but the voters were very motivated. I was a poll greeter for the early voting and it was far busier than ever before, including the 3 times Trump won.

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Complacency is killing me!

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I stated the Republican party, not the citizens.

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My god, you guys are so delusional if you pretend for one moment this is a one-party problem. Gerrymandering is rampant on both sides.

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…and your maganificent useful solution?

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Fair point. I was in fact wondering if VA was even on Trump’s radar after the gubernatorial race.

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Texas didn’t even have the courtesy to hold a vote when it took the democratic seats. Democrats have proposed a law banning gerrymandering the Republicans all said no. So gerrymandering is only bad when you lose?

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Here’s your favorite congresswoman talking aobut it… https://www.youtube.com/shorts/kXxegNBMNvc

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It’s bad when it goes against the laws of your state.

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And in typical dem fashion, she ignores answering the question and goes off onto the the subject of dems wanting to stop gerrymandering 10 years ago, disregarding the unconstitutionality of the act according to Virginia law.

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“Gerrymandering” is named after a democrat, just say’n.

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The Tuesday wote was against a Virginia Constitutional amendment that created districts with a bi-partixan committee that created fair distrists based on continuity of localities (compactness), population, etc., to create districts that represented the people in a given area. Prior to the redistricting plan, my mostly rural and suburban county was sliced-up and the Conservative votes were diluted by being included into urban districts that vote democrat.

After the bipartisan committee redistricting, my area was included in a district that was mostly rural and suburban and included the entire county. There is no fairness in the democratic plan.

AOC wants to end partisan gerrymandering? The bipartisan committe in Virginia did that. The democrats obviously do not want that, which is why the first chance to do that, they tried to. The question was so badly worded that it claimed that it would create a fair system of redistricting. If that were true, why would they want to make “only temporary,” as they claimed? Clearly that is untrue.

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Why am I not surprised you don’t know the answer? Establishing independent redistricting commissions (IRCs) to remove map-drawing power from politicians, passing federal legislation (such as the Freedom to Vote Act) to set national fairness standards, and adopting proportional representation systems, which make it nearly impossible to draw map lines that significantly disadvantage a political party.

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Thanks for the always valuable insight.

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What we need is rank choice voting and statewide election or representatives (or 5-8 multi rep grouping for larger states). If you have atleast 5 reps elected in a state or group, 20% vote is enough to get a rep elected.

And rank choice voting will also break the 2 party hold on the country. We will have a bunch of parties like it was intended.

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If there was a test submitted with each vote, we wouldn’t have any of our problems.

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