Virginia Senate Majority Leader Richard Saslaw says a redistricting commission isn’t needed to help officials redraw Virginia’s congressional and state legislative districts. Gov. Bob McDonnell formed a bipartisan redistricting panel to draw several scenarios and provide guidance to the General Assembly. However, the commission has no real clout, and the state legislature still has the final say over the once-a-decade process of drawing new lines. While some Virginia Democrats have promoted laws to form a true redistricting panel, Saslaw said he doesn’t see why such a commission is necessary.
“I voted for that redistricting commission, but the reality is, the U.S. Supreme Court has said redistricting is a political act,” said Saslaw, D-Fairfax. “I don’t know for the life of me why we need to have a nonpartisan commission draw it.”
Saslaw added that Democrats took control of the Senate with districts drawn entirely by Republicans in 2001, and that the lines may not have as great an effect as assumed.
“There’s no substitute for good candidates,” he added.
Despite hopes that the commission will help remove some of the political bias that guides the process, experts say it’s unlikely the commission will have much of an influence.
“[Politicians] are mainly interested in redrawing lines in a way that allows them to be re-elected with a minimum of fuss,” said Stephen Farnsworth, professor of communications at George Mason University. “So that being said, they are very powerful incentives for the legislature not to pay attention to the line drawing commission.”
But despite the attractiveness of a particular candidate, a redistricting process in which representatives get to pick their constituents can turn voters away from participating in future elections, Farnsworth said.
“If a district is overwhelmingly one party, that means there isn’t a real competition,” he said. “The real decisions are made in the primary election, where you have the most extreme 3 or 4 percent of the electorate deciding who the party nominee is.”
