The Commonwealth of Virginia is experiencing a slow-rolling political earthquake of sorts.
After the 2020 census, every state was required to redraw its legislative districts for all elections – House of Representatives, state legislatures, and local offices – to meet the constitutional requirement of equal representation in these policy-making bodies. Historically, many states have engaged in partisan gerrymandering to accomplish political goals through this statistical process. This generally meant grouping like-minded voters together or intentionally splintering them to increase or decrease their power in legislative bodies. Over the past couple of decades, a handful of states have decided to turn this process over to Independent Redistricting Commissions in order to reduce the impact of partisan politics on this process. Virginia was one of those states.
After the 2020 census, the new redistricting commission in Virginia began its work to redraw legislative districts. The commission was intended to be non-partisan, but it ended up being bi-partisan – and they gridlocked on their maps. The Supreme Court of Virginia weighed in and made the final decision on these maps. A lot of people weren’t happy with the result, but overall the state is less gerrymandered than it was before. The Princeton gerrymandering project awarded Virginia a “B” for the results. For comparison – among other states, Georgia and Ohio both received an ”F.” So a “B” is better, but it’s not yet where we need to be.
One of the decisions the redistricting commission made at the beginning of its work was that the members would not consider the impact that their decisions would have on incumbents. “Incumbent-blind” redistricting doesn’t focus on adjusting the existing district boundaries; it involves drawing the districts “de novo” and letting the incumbents deal with it. Their reasoning was simple – incumbents were elected from the previously gerrymandered districts, and the commission saw no reason to continue that inequality. The Virginia commission went a step further — they renumbered all of the legislative districts in order to erase any assumption that the new districts were outgrowths of the old districts. I used to be in Virginia House of Delegates District 96 and State Senate District 3; I’m now in House of Delegates District 71 and State Senate District 26. Not a big deal — but different.
The result was predictable but still significant. GOP Senator Norment is not the only member of the General Assembly who has decided not to run for reelection in November (Virginia’s odd-numbered-year elections leave us out of sync with the election cycle in most of the rest of the country). Tommy, a graduate of William and Mary’s Law School, is a Williamsburg native who has been in elective office since 1987 – and since 1991 has been a member of the Virginia State Senate. During that time, he has risen to a position of significant power and influence, serving as chairman of the powerful Senate Finance and Appropriations committee and as the Senate Majority Leader. His departure will decrease the influence of my part of Virginia in the state legislature. I don’t agree with Tommy on virtually any policy issues, but he was in the room where it happened.
Why did Tommy step down? It was probably a combination of factors. His newly-drawn district still leans Republican, but the district now wraps in another incumbent – GOP State Senator Ryan McDougal from a town close to Richmond. Tommy apparently wanted to avoid a primary race against a GOP colleague. I don’t know either man personally, but I can’t imagine that Tommy made this decision without talking with McDougal. The other factor that probably had an impact was age. Tommy is 76 years old and McDougal is a generation younger – he’s 51. In today’s Gazette article, Tommy provides some reasons for his decision to retire. Spending more time with his family, returning to teaching at William and Mary, and participating in local civic activities led the list, but I imagine wanting to leave his constituents in reliably Republican hands had an impact.
As I said, Tommy is not alone in his decision. This is where the political earthquake (well, tremor) comes in. To date, a dozen members of the state legislature announced their retirements at the end of this year’s legislative session, which ended a week ago. There are always retirements after each session, but this year there are more than usual. The article briefly mentions my delegate, Mike Mullin, who announced his decision not to run for reelection on Wednesday of last week. On Thursday, he and his family experienced an unimaginable tragedy — their 3-month-old son died that afternoon. I don’t know how the infant died and I don’t need to know. I can’t imagine how Mike would have carried on his political life in the wake of this personal loss. Political earthquakes are inconsequential in the face of real-life events like this.
Political turnover is good. Tommy is another baby boomer who has probably stayed in office too long. This is not to denigrate baby boomers – I think we’re pretty swell. But the generation’s unwillingness to step aside when any reasonable person would retire means that ambitious younger people are blocked from positions of power.
This reminds me of conversations I used to have with my AP Government students. We talked about programs like Social Security and analyzed (well, sort of) the financial condition of this vital program. In discussing possible solutions, we looked at the prospect of increasing the retirement age required to receive Social Security benefits. Some of my students wanted the age to move, not to 70 but to 75 or 85. Then I asked them where they were going to get jobs if the geezers were still in them. They had to think about that. My work was done.
Anyway.
A second article in today’s Gazette also caught my eye.
This is a simple story that announces a proposed change in the districts drawn after the 2020 census. This impacts the City of Williamsburg only. This small city has only two precincts (voting locations), which sit less than a mile apart. As I said, Williamsburg is a small city.
This Williamsburg City Council will hold a public hearing on the proposed change in its regular March meeting, which will be held on March 9. The change has been proposed, in part, due to a Virginia state law that requires localities to revise precinct boundaries whenever the number of voters who voted in a precinct in the presidential election exceeds 4,000. The article goes on to note that the change will not affect voters’ assigned state or congressional districts.
This is not a huge change and I can’t imagine anyone having serious objections to it. But some folks have gone a little wacko about “election integrity” (although the current evolving story about the chicanery employed by Fox “News” to amplify these allegations in the face of almost no evidence may undermine this argument), and there may be some sign-waving or remarks at the hearing claiming that the deep state is trying to push its agenda – or something.
The more significant issue may be confusion at these two polling locations in upcoming elections. I am an election officer for James City County (not the City of Williamsburg), and residents all over the county (and across the country) voted in newly-drawn districts last November. Local registrars did their best to let voters know if their voting locations had changed. They sent a series of postcards to voters to tell them where they needed to vote. They put the information on their websites and in The Virginia Gazette and Daily Press (this paper is published in Newport News, Virginia, a larger (although not large) city about 15 miles from Williamsburg). The Virginia Gazette and the Daily Press are owned by the same company, by the way, and not that it matters for this PSA. The local political party organizations sent the information to people on their mailing lists. Signs and billboards announced that changes had been made and that voters should check to make sure they were voting in the right place. People put notices on local Facebook pages and in the Nextdoor app.
We still had minor confusion on election day at the precinct where I worked. Voters came to our precinct although they had been redistricted somewhere else. We had to tell them to go to the other precinct to vote, and some of them were annoyed. At least one voter accused us of voter suppression. Other voters came to us after having been turned away from where they thought they were supposed to vote, and they were visibly annoyed when they got to us. Some voters gave up – I know that because they told us that they couldn’t be bothered with wandering “all over the place” to find where they were supposed to vote.
Did it make a difference in the local results in the recent elections? Almost certainly it did not in my part of Virginia, because we didn’t have any races that were close enough to raise concerns about a few dozen votes across the region. But there were parts of the state – and parts of the country – where margins were tighter and a few disaffected voters might have swung the election.
The election effects I’ve talked about in this blog post are not unique to my part of Virginia. They are happening all over the country and most voters pay little attention to this issue until they get to the polls on election day and realize they are in the wrong place.
When we were first notified of the change in our Congressional District, I dashed to Mr. Google to see what the new area included. It was vastly different and initially I was .... errr, not happy. Then I read (almost all of) the Commission's report. Then I was impressed. While I have always like it that I lived in an area that mostly leaned "my way", I had always believed that candidates had to stand on their own promises or records and let the voters choose.
What I learned from the Commission's report was that they looked at population. They tried to use county lines and put voters in contiguous area - not the terrible gerrymanders that we had in the eastern half of the state previously. And, most impressive of all (at least to me) was that all Districts except one had EXACTLY the same number of inhabitants. (The one had ONE more person - egads!) In other words, every voter in Virginia had an EQUAL vote. Isn't that what it's all about? After they were done the Commission looked at previous voting patterns and found that they had the same number of red-leaning, blue-leaning and toss-up districts. As you noted, it went to the Va. Supreme Court, and I honestly don't know what changes they made. It isn't perfect, but so much better than in the past.
Locally, we had to change precincts, too. We went from the middle school seven blocks away to the middle school four blocks away, so I guess that's good, but I have to admit that since Va. now allows early voting without a reason, I now vote as early as I can and avoid standing in line on election day.
Thanks for your service as an election officer. Hope you don't need a ballistic vest in James City County.
Good and decent change is bound to annoy somebody. I liked your story about your HS class and the question of Social Security. Get them thinking!