Every ten years, following the U.S. Census that occurs in years ending in zero, political borders are redone within states. This is often done by the legislature in each state. That unfortunately often leads to gerrymandering, a practice that sets boundaries for the sake of political advantage rather than for the sake of the people in the district. In 2010, Virginia’s General Assembly set some strange boundaries with a lot of weirdly shaped districts.
Recently Virginia passed a constitutional amendment that now creates a special commission which represents the two main political parties equally. The commission is supposed to set the new district boundaries. Unfortunately, they could not reach an agreement – for political reasons – so the newly passed constitutional amendment throws the decision to the Virginia Supreme Court. The Court appointed two “special masters” to recommend new district lines and present their work to the Court for amendment or approval.
The special masters’ first draft was released on December 8. The Supreme Court is allowing public comments, and the lawyers for political parties and individual elected officials have not weighed in on the lines. Nor has the Supreme Court announced how it will proceed from here. Those with some knowledge of these matters believe that the Court will make a final determination in January, but it could be earlier.
This article is too brief to discuss the significant changes in all 40 state senate districts and 100 delegate districts, so it is limited to the rather stark changes in congressional districts.
The number of Congressmen is limited by federal law to 435 total members. They are divided out to each state based on the percentage of the country’s total population contained in that state. For example, Alaska and Montana have relatively small populations so they have only one Congressman each. Because of population shifts revealed by the census, California lost some of its Congressional seats and Texas gained seats. Virginia retains the eleven Congressional seats it had prior to the census.
The target population for each Virginia district is 784,672. The draft presented by the special masters leaves every district within a quarter of one percent of that total. Because of differences in population growth in the Commonwealth, Congressional districts in the western part of the state had to become larger in geographical size.
When redoing the Sixth and Ninth Congressional District lines, the special masters agreed that the Blue Ridge Mountains provided a natural dividing line for “communities of interest” so they tried to keep those two districts on the west side of the mountains. The draft for the Sixth District is within 0.16 percent of the target population. To accomplish that the draft takes Craig and Allegheny Counties and the Cities of Covington and Salem away from the Ninth District and puts them in the Sixth along with several additional precincts in Roanoke County, which was already split between the two districts. Additionally, the Sixth also gets Frederick and Clarke Counties and the City of Winchester from the Tenth District at the northern end of the district.
To bring the Ninth up to the target population (within 0.17 percent), their lines moved east picking up the part of Henry County that was not already in the Ninth along with most of Bedford County (except for the Forest area just west of Lynchburg) and all of Franklin County.
The Fifth District has been geographically the largest, most sprawling district in Virginia. That district was made much more contiguous (as the law requires). To do this, the draft would move the Forest area of Bedford County, Amherst County, and the City of Lynchburg from the Sixth District to the Fifth. Additionally, the counties north of Charlottesville that had been in the Fifth would be moved to the Tenth District. To bring the Fifth up to the target population (within 0.14 percent), the draft would add the western half of Chesterfield County (on a north/south line from a point just east of Midlothian) and Amelia and Powhatan Counties to the Fifth.
The other proposed Congressional Districts bear little resemblance to how they look now. They are much more contiguous than they have been although the Second District looks like a trendy capital “J” because it wraps around the east, south, and west sides of a District Three that is comprised of the four cities in Hampton Roads.
To learn more, go to www.virginiaredistricting.org and click on “information page” in the first paragraph.
Cordially,
Steve “Doc” Troxel, Ph.D.