Last month, Democrats fought Republicans in a nationwide gerrymandering war. Republicans, feeling panicked amidst high gas prices and low approval ratings for President Donald Trump, are seeking every advantage by trying to redraw maps ahead of midterm elections. Democrats have done the same.
Justices on the Supreme Court of Virginia voted 4-3 on May 8 to strike down a congressional map that could have given the Democrats four new seats for a 10-1 advantage in the House of Representatives. According to CNN, the court decided the state’s legislature had not followed the rules when they put a constitutional amendment permitting redistricting before voters last month. The case centered on the question of what constitutes an “election.”
On April 21, voters in Virginia narrowly approved the amendment, which would give the Democrat-controlled General Assembly the power to redraw district lines before the next census, which is when a bipartisan committee was next supposed to redistrict. But to get the amendment on the ballot in the first place, it had to be approved twice by Virginia’s legislature – once before an election, and once after.
State lawmakers first voted to approve the amendment on Oct. 31, 2025, which was shortly before Election Day on Nov. 4. Republicans argued that this first approval came too late, as early voting was already underway.
The Virginia Supreme Court sided with the amendment’s opponents. The court ruled that the election had started with early voting on Sept. 19, meaning the amendment did not have two valid approvals by the state legislature and never should have gone to the public in the first place. Virginia Democrats tried to appeal, but on May 15, the U.S. Supreme Court decided to let the state court’s ruling stand.
Virginia isn’t the only state that has attempted to use redistricting to give one party an advantage. Some states that have been gerrymandered by the Republicans include Texas, Florida and Ohio. In fact, according to the Gerrymandering Project’s “Redistricting Report Card,” a majority of the nation’s 16 poorly redistricted states lean in favor of Republicans.
In my opinion, while the margin of victory for Democrats in Virginia proved slim, as less than 52% of voters approved of the amendment, the election was still fair and reliable. The referendum results speak for themselves.
The judicial reasoning for overturning the election is neither logical nor constitutional. The concern of early voting is legitimate, but the court’s ruling does not match the definition of an “election” in the state of Virginia, which historically has been limited to a day in November rather than an early voting period.
Absentee voting has existed in Virginia for more than a century. The state first authorized mail-in voting in 1916, according to the Smithsonian’s National Postal Museum. Early voting is utilized to make the process more convenient for citizens, but the election has always been historically understood as the Tuesday succeeding the first Monday in November.
Virginians continued to make their opinions heard and showed up to the polls in April, clearly voicing support for the referendum. The process was followed and the judicial reasoning for overturning the referendum is not consistent.
