BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON  |  MAR 19, 2025

“Redistricting is like an election in reverse. It’s a great event. Usually the voters get to pick the politicians. In redistricting, the politicians get to pick the voters.”
–The late Tom Hoferller, considered the guru of GOP reapportionment maps

That is exactly what is about to happen in Virginia April 21 when voters go to the polls to adopt or reject this amendment to the state’s Constitution:

“Should the Constitution of Virginia be amended to allow the General Assembly to temporarily adopt new congressional districts to restore fairness in the upcoming elections, while ensuring Virginia’s standard redistricting process resumes for all future redistricting after the 2030 census?”

According to the Virginia General Assembly’s official description, current law says “Virginia’s eleven congressional districts are drawn once every ten years by the Virginia Redistricting Commission, a legislative body made up of eight legislators and eight citizens, with an equal number of Republicans and Democrats. Virginia’s congressional districts were last redrawn in 2021 and will next be redrawn in 2031.”

The amendment, if adopted, would give the legislature the authority to “temporarily” redraw Virginia’s congressional districts any time before 2031, but only if another state voluntarily does so first, violating the spirit and rule of the current Virginia Constitution and the U.S. Constitution, both of which limit the states to reapportioning every ten years after the decennial census.

Virginia isn’t the only one seeking justice through gerrymandering.

The 2025 gerrymandering campaigns got underway after President Donald Trump pressured the State of Texas to redraw its congressional districts to improve the Republican chances of gaining as many as five seats in Congress this fall. That was all it took. Shortly thereafter other Democratic and Republican states joined in, either to blunt what Trump was doing, or reinforce what he was doing. There have been initiatives in California, Maryland, Indiana, Illinois, New York, Ohio, Missouri, and Florida, among others.

Gerrymandering is a notorious and injurious practice that defies principles of a democratic Republic. It disenfranchises voters and contributes to the divisions in Congress that create gridlock. Former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said what is going on today is a battle between Republicans and Democrats trying to outcheat each other.

Among other deficiencies, the practice creates “safe seats” in Congress, creating a situation where the legislator holding that seat can win re-election by winning the primary and coasting through the general election. The number of safe seats grows with each election season. Some estimates put it as high as 80 percent.

But gerrymandering is embedded in our elective process and has been a tool of partisan combatants since our founding.

Here’s how Virginia holds a special place in gerrymandering “justice.”

Former Virginia Gov. Patrick Henry, a highly influential and rabid anti-Federalist led and lost his fight in 1788 to stop Virginia from ratifying the nation’s newly drawn Federal Constitution. Angry Henry loyalists stormed out of the ratifying convention hall– and did what politicians are often wont to do in politics–adjourned to a local tavern to plot a new strategy. Henry decided the best alternative was to pack the new Congress with anti-Federalists who would work to sabotage the new charter. A key plank in his strategy was to gerrymander the 5th Congressional District of Virginia to prevent James Madison from winning a seat in Congress.

Henry coaxed the Assembly into drawing the boundaries of the 5th so that Madison’s home county of Orange was redistricted in with other counties that were dominated by anti-Federalists. But in order for this to succeed, Madison had to have a formidable opponent. Henry then persuaded a reluctant James Monroe to run against Madison. Henry again failed. Madison beat his friend and neighbor handily and went on to ensure passage of the first 10 amendments to the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, a promise he had made to Virginia’s delegates to the ratifying convention. This was all chronicled in an excellent biography of Monroe, The Last Founding Father by Harlow Unger.

“I suspect the plan will be to engage 2/3 of the legislatures in the task of undoing the work,” Madison wrote to George Washington or “to get a Congress appointed in the first instance that will commit suicide on their own authority,” wrote Unger.

Fast forward to 1812 in Massachusetts where Gov. Eldridge Gerry gerrymandered a district in his state to prevent the election of Federalists who would create opposition to President Thomas Jefferson. The new district looked to its critics like a salamander, thus was born the moniker “gerrymander.”

“One of the more harmful influences on the process (of impeding sound legislating) is gerrymandering,” Jerry Climer and I wrote in our book, Fixing Congress: Restoring Power to the People. “Experts have been devising ways to reduce gerrymandering for decades, maybe centuries, but politicians always find a way to protect their self-interests. It is one of the three legislative inhibitors that evoke some of the most blatant hypocrisy from both parties.“

There have been several workable alternatives proposed to gerrymandering that have been tried with varying degrees of success. Virginia adopted one in 2021 when it created a bipartisan reapportionment commission. It drew districts lines for this decade that resulted in Democrats holding six seats in Congress and Republicans five, reflecting the true political coloration of Virginians’ politics. It is, and remains, a purple state, not red and not blue.

That commission was sidelined last year in favor of a new map designed to give Democrats 10 seats in Congress and the Republicans one. That is not the definition of “fair.”

Gerrymandering has had negative repercussions, geographically, demographically, racially, and socially. It has made it more difficult and costly for members of Congress to stay in contact with their constituents, for example. A legislator cannot make efficient use of time and resources when he/she must travel hundreds of miles from one end of the district to another. It is bad enough that a member of Congress now represents 760,000 people scattered over a disfigured and misaligned area.

Reapportionment is not a simple political issue and never has been over the 250 years of the Republic. It is complicated by partisan and ideological polarization, to which Trump has contributed significantly and has used to his advantage. It is complicated by narrow majorities in Congress that vest unwarranted power in the hands of political extremes, resulting in governmental gridlock, which intensifies the reliance on gerrymandering. It’s a revolving door that takes you nowhere.

It is hard to argue against the belief among Democrats that Trump has to be stopped; that he has injected this nefarious practice into the redrawing political lines to serve his purposes and that his attempt to rig the 2026 elections can only be neutralized by blue states engaging in the same strategy in reverse.

Members of my family whose opinions I respect and depend on, insist that resistance is a fundamental matter of fairness. I agree that Trump must be harnessed and that fair elections are critical to our democratic ways. I can’t argue with that reasoning, but I can submit what I believe is of equal legitimacy that—excuse the cliché—two wrongs don’t make a right.

Gerrymandering is wrong, no matter who or what party is drawing the lines. You don’t fight Trump by becoming Trump. And no form of resistance in defiance of Article I, Section 2 of the Constitution, which prescribes reapportionment after the once-a-decade census, is justified.

Disregarding the Constitution, as Trump and other presidents have been prone to do to suit their own purposes is an unlawful exercise in bad politics and bad governance. Virginia says we must do it just this once, just on a temporary basis and afterwards everything will return to as it was. Uh huh.