Virginia Capitol Connections Summer 2019

Redistricting Reform and the Ongoing Debasement of Minority Voting Rights in Virginia By Mark Rush

The process by which the electoral districts for Virginia’s House of Delegates are redrawn has taken essentially the entire decade. A special master redrew them in 2019 in the wake of decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court and the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. As of this writing, those new districts were once again being litigated in the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS). The original trip to SCOTUS was a vote dilution challenge under section 2 of

imposed by Virginia on, for example, dividing municipal our county boundaries. More important, single-member districts are inherently contradictory to the VRA because they offer black voters virtually no choice on Election Day. Based on the 2010 census,Virginia had a population of 8,001,024. Therefore each of the 100 districts in the House of Delegates had to have a population of about 80,000. Each of the 40 Senate districts had to have a population of about 400,000. A quick look at the populations of Virginia’s cities and counties indicates that cannot fit inside of one House or even one Senate district. When we stop to consider that a nontrivial number of districts (5 in the Senate and 12 in the House) must be drawn to support minority representation opportunities, it is clear that House and Senate districts will have to cut across municipal and county boundaries to aggregate enough minority voters to satisfy the VRA. Furthermore, single-member districts make the electoral process more confusing. Senate districts cut across House districts and vice versa. As a result, neighbors in the same Senate district may vote in different House districts. Finally, the use of single-member districts, coupled with campaign finance and spending laws ensures that incumbents are virtually unbeatable and, therefore, seldom face serious challenges in general elections (if they face them at all). This means that for many Virginia voters, there is no choice on Election Day. Sadly, as bad as this situation is across the Commonwealth, it is even worse for voters in districts drawn in compliance with the VRA. The following table summarizes House and Senate elections in Virginia from 2001-2017. During that period there were nine House elections (2001, 2003, 2005, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2013, 2015 and 2017) and four Senate elections (2004, 2008, 2012 and 2016). Thus, there were 900 House and 140 Senate races. In the House, 108 of the races were in the VRA districts (9 elections x 12 districts) and in the Senate, 20 of the races were in VRA districts (4 elections x 5 districts) Continued on next page

the Voting Rights Act (VRA). The Court of Appeals concluded that Virginia had packed too many black voters into the 12 districts that had been drawn to ensure that minority voters had, in the words of theVRA, an equal opportunity to elect “representatives of their choice”. To ensure this, the districts were drawn with a 55% black voting age population. Plaintiffs argued that it was no longer necessary to create such “majority-minority” districts. Instead, they argued, the vestiges of racism were now receding and white voters were increasingly willing to “crossover” and vote for black candidates. Accordingly, if black candidates could count on this crossover voting to win elections, it was not necessary to pack so many black voters into their districts. This is actually a wonderful development. If blacks and whites really have shed the vestiges of an unfortunate past and vote for candidates of different races, we should celebrate. In addition, the legislature passed a resolution in 2019 in support of transferring the redistricting process to a nonpartisan (or, at least, bipartisan commission). This will remove the veneer of conflict of interest that currently characterizes the process. But, so long as Virginia uses the single-member district system to elect our legislators, redistricting will continue to be litigious, expensive and harmful to black voters. This is because single member districts are much more likely to violate the VRA and the constraints

Figure 1: Counties split by House of Delegates Districts. (Counties outlined in Red. Delegate district boundaries in yellow)

Figure 2: Senate districts split by Delegates districts (Senate outlined in blue Delegate districts outlined in yellow)

V irginia C apitol C onnections , S ummer 2019

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