By Shirleen Guerra | The Center Square
(The Center Square) – Redistricting returned to the spotlight Monday as Virginia lawmakers met in Richmond for a special session called less than two weeks before the Nov. 4 election.
Speaker of the House Don Scott, D-Portsmouth, announced the 4 p.m. session in a letter last week, saying it would reconvene the still-active 2024 Special Session “to consider matters properly before the ongoing session.”
The timing has drawn political attention as it forced some candidates off the campaign trail, including Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, who presided over the Senate in her official role Monday while also speaking outside the Capitol about the commonwealth’s redistricting system.
“I have left the campaign trail because it is my duty to be here,” Earle-Sears said. “The voters created an independent redistricting commission. Only the voters have the right to decide its future.”
She accused Democrats of “trying to dismantle the very commission Virginians voted for in a bipartisan majority,” calling the special session “an attempt to grab power by erasing the voters’ voice.”
Republican lieutenant governor nominee John Reid also spoke outside the Capitol, saying the move was “not fair.”
Redistricting is the process of redrawing election boundaries every 10 years to reflect population changes reported by the U.S. Census. In 2020, Virginia voters approved a constitutional amendment creating a bipartisan commission to draw legislative and congressional maps.
Walter Olson, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute’s Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies, told The Center Square that Texas and a few other states tried mid-decade redistricting after the 2000 census, but the practice has resurfaced this year as part of a political strategy pushed by President Donald Trump.
“There are basically only two reasons why states redistrict in the middle of a cycle,” Olson said. “One is that a court has ordered them to do so; the other is that someone wants to gain political advantage by redrawing lines. This year it’s the second reason.”
Olson said the legislature taking back authority to draw its own maps “would seem to break with the plan voters approved,” especially if lawmakers “intend to cram a plan through against one side’s objections.”
“States that impose mid-cycle gerrymanders risk worsening political polarization,” Olson added. “They’re ignoring decades of polls suggesting that voters want less politics in the process, and even touching off worries from lawmakers of the dominant party who worry about being assigned districts in which they are not popular.”
The Senate adjourned Monday evening without discussion or action on redistricting. Lawmakers are scheduled to reconvene Tuesday at 9 a.m.