Supporters of creating a bipartisan panel to redraw Virginia’s legislative districts are reviving their perennial effort before lawmakers return to Richmond next month, hoping to reform a process long left up to party leadership.
Virginia’s congressional and General Assembly district lines are set to be shifted in 2011 based upon population data from the 2010 census. Critics say the current system of allowing the majority party in each house to redraw their own lines has created plentiful safe seats for incumbents and few truly contested districts.
Bills that instead would put redistricting in the hands of an independent panel have been killed for years. Last session, such a bill from Sen. Creigh Deeds, D-Bath, met its end in a House subcommittee.
Deeds, who is seeking the Democratic nomination for governor, has filed another bill for the upcoming legislative session in January that would set up the panel.
“The problem with the process now is the people are not the first consideration,” Deeds said Monday. “The first consideration is the protection of incumbents and the protection of partisanship. We can do better.”
While many remain doubtful the new legislation will see a different fate, League of Women Voters of Virginia President Olga Hernandez sees some bright spots. The league will discuss the issue at an event Wednesday.
The political uncertainty created by Democratic gains in the state could lead the House’s leading Republican opponents of a redistricting commission to reconsider, or risk having their districts redrawn by majority Democrats in both the Virginia House and Senate, Hernandez said. And nonpartisan redistricting is gaining steam across the country, she said, with California voters approving a ballot measure setting up a panel this month.
University of Virginia political science professor Larry Sabato, who has long pushed for the change, sharply disagreed that things are any different now.
“You won’t find a bigger pessimist than me about it actually happening,” he said. “I wish it would, but there are just too many specific political interests at work here.”
No one who could speak for opponents of the measure could be reached Monday.
