“Yes” For Fairness – So What’s The Confusion?

By Rosaland Tyler
Associate Editor
New Journal and Guide

Virginia voters will read one line on the April 21 ballot and decide if the General Assembly will amend the state constitution by “temporarily adopt(ing) 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.”

That’s it. This one line sums up the redistricting effort in Virginia.

Voters may choose “YES” or “NO.”

Early voting is already underway with Election Day on Tuesday, April 21.

Are some people making the redistricting issue complicated because they don’t know the background story?

The Virginia Supreme Court ruled a statewide referendum would be held April 21 to authorize mid-decade redistricting. The court will decide sometime later if the plan is legal. The newly revised redistricting map could help Democrats win up to 10 seats in this year’s midterm elections, at a time when a GOP president is trying to preserve a narrow GOP majority in the House. In plain terms, legislators need voter approval to temporarily set aside a constitutional provision that places redistricting authority with a bipartisan commission and instead grant that power to the General Assembly

News reports show both Republicans and Democrats are trying to gain power by rewriting redistricting measures nationwide.

“I think that a lot of the success or failure of this referendum will depend on the efforts to present this case to the voters,” said Stephen Farnsworth.

Farnsworth is a political science professor at the University of Mary Washington in Virginia. Speaking, recently to The Hill, he continued,  “People are not used to voting in April in Virginia, and the referendum has been on again-off again, because of earlier court rulings. And so now that it is definitely proceeding, there will be a lot of effort to persuade voters on both sides of this question.”

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On the April ballot, Virginia voters will be asked whether their state constitution should be amended to let the General Assembly “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.”

It bears repeating because a January poll from Christopher Newport University found 51 percent of Virginia voters supported mid-decade redistricting via constitutional amendment. But a February poll from Roanoke College, meanwhile, found that 52 percent of respondents said they’d vote to keep the existing process in place. So what about the remaining 48-49 percent who responded to the poll? Do these two polls show a lot of people are totally confused and just don’t get it – or something else?

By voting “YES” voters will agree to restore fairness in the upcoming elections, but not forever, in other words. Virginia’s standard redistricting process will resume for all future redistricting after the 2030 census is conducted, in plain terms.

Democrats phrased the question ‘to restore fairness to elections.” And this phrase could sway the ultimate results, Harry Wilson, the Roanoke College poll’s director, noted in a recent release.

While some voters are busy juggling certifiably complex issues like the war in Iran, high gas prices, an unexpected mole on their nose, and runaway living expenses – well, uh, the political mailer has made stuff even more complicated. Letters in the mail keep arriving. These letters show angry Civil Rights marchers and Ku Klux Klan members carrying guns and ropes. As a result, some voters are comparing the current redistricting push to the volatile Jim Crow atmosphere. But they are actually living in the year 2026.

A mind is a terrible thing to waste. Still, a little-known, GOP-aligned group, the Democracy and Justice PAC, is sending out these mailers “to try to trick Black voters in Virginia,” Don Scott, the first Black Speaker of the Virginia House, recently told reporters.

Plus the midterm primaries have been shifted from a June start to August, which is also increasing voter confusion. Meanwhile, former President Obama recently appeared in an ad to promote the Virginia measure. Assuming that all Virginians have carefully read and fully understand the straightforward line on the ballot, Obama called out Republican-controlled states that have redistricted “to give themselves an unfair advantage in the midterms” – and argued that “Virginians can respond.”