Virginia To Let Voters Choose Their Reps

This is a huge issue at a potentially important turning point. The state of Virginia, whose legislature is controlled by a super-majority of Democrats for the first time in a generation, has taken the unprecedented step of surrendering what may be the biggest prize in any state legislature, the right to redraw Congressional district lines once-a-decade, following the U.S. Census. And they’re making sure it sticks by using a constitutional amendment rather than an easily overturned law.

Virginia Democrats have voluntarily surrendered the biggest prize in partisan legislative competition by authorizing an independent redistricting commission rather than enjoying the spoils of their 2018 victories, and doing to the Republicans in turn what the Republicans did to them: Make it impossible for the opposition party to gain a majority in the statehouse or Congress.

I know there is trepidation about observing Marquis of Queensbury Rules when your opponent has a knife in their boot, and just the right moral bearing to use it, but the cycle must be broken. It's nearly as old as the republic, but in recent years, a confluence of events has weaponized partisan redistricting.

Super-fast computers using markedly more sophisticated software came along just as the very conservative ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, recognized that vast power lay within state government, and the best political strategy of the moment was to worry less about the White House, and more about the State House. They were very successful at placing a lot of governors and legislators. With them, came a power to redistrict so precisely, they can win with a minority of overall votes. That's a new one. (Worthy of note: ALEC also writes boilerplate legislation that passes Republican legislatures with often not so much as a comma changed.)

They know they lack the numbers to win fair and square, so they have to tilt the playing field with tactics like voter suppression, and the most undemocratic act imaginable: fixing it so representatives pick their voters, and not the other way around.

Virginia is good first step.