The strained labors of the new Virginia Redistricting Commission were predictable. The trouble with redistricting — the reapportionment of the state’s congressional and legislative districts — is that it is difficult.
Not difficult in a run-of-the-mill legislative sense, where sides square off to determine which position prevails. Those can be hard enough, depending on the issue involved.
Rather, redistricting gets hard because it centers on lawmakers themselves. It can sometimes determine their political fate and, truth is, politicians would rather determine that themselves.
Which is why control over redistricting has been such a long-standing and protracted challenge in Virginia and most everywhere else. Who draws the lines, rules — in a manner of fashion.
The rallying cry for reform, which led to the creation of the commission, centered on a desire in Virginia for a more open and inclusive process. That desire produced last year’s broad approval, by voter referendum (66% to 34%, not close), to put this business in less interested hands.
“Less” is a relative term, of course, because lawmakers remain in the mix. The non-partisan redistricting commission has partisan participants — sitting office-holders — which really wasn’t the original idea.
Instead, Virginia is trying to make do with a somewhat compromised affair composed of eight elected lawmakers and eight citizens.
That commission is spitting and sputtering, to put it kindly. Again, none of this is easy.
But are we making progress? Yes, there’s an argument for optimism.
You can take measure of the proceedings, for starters. That was not the case previously. All you got was a barred room, with the majority party legislators closeted inside doing their best (or worse, as the case may be) to save themselves.
Granted, seeing what’s happening may not be gladdening or inspiring, but there is much to be said for transparency in a functioning democracy. It lays a more legitimate basis for settling these matters. It is a step in the right direction.
Just don’t expect things to get less difficult going forward. There are two big factors underlying this business, only one of which has been roughly resolved.
Number one was the historic movement of America’s population from rural settings to urban. When that occurred, over a long period of time, the districts stayed static. In Virginia, for instance, during the 1950s, the population in Hampton Roads and Northern Virginia grew by 33% and 72% respectively.
Did the districts change accordingly? No. Virginia House districts included anywhere from 20,000 residents to more than 140,000; state senate districts ranged from about 52,000 to 285,000.
Once the U.S. Supreme Court settled on a principle — one person, one vote — those arrangements could no longer endure. An excellent history of all this was published in 2014 by J. Douglas Smith.
Smith, by the way, earlier wrote “Managing White Supremacy: Race, Politics and Citizenship in Jim Crow Virginia,” which earned him the 2003 Library of Virginia Literary Award in non-fiction.
Both books insightfully illuminate Virginia’s history, including the second big factor: race.
Malapportionment and civil rights have an historic relationship. There is a reason, as Justice Arthur Goldberg pointed out during the high court’s review of redistricting in the 1960s, why Richmond had at the time more senators than Northern Virginia.
That “reason” also explains why the Black Legislative Caucus in the House of Delegates unanimously opposed the creation of the new Virginia Redistricting Commission.
Indeed, should the new commission’s labors lay a basis for reduced Black legislative representation in Richmond or Washington, it will not go unnoticed, to put it lightly.
On Tuesday, One Virginia 2021, the leading advocacy group behind redistricting reform, urged its followers to “thank and support the commissioners who are voting to make this process fair and transparent … particularly the citizen members. They are sticking their necks out and standing up for the public at large.”
True enough. The slog may be long, but we’re making headway.
