Spanberger tells rural Virginia to drop dead

[the watcher]

The Peoples Republic of Virginia is definitely going through a phase.

 

[rightwinger]

MSN

Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger has pursued a maximalist partisan agenda since being sworn into office. She is making housing, healthcare, and energy all more expensive. But nothing she has done so far is as insulting as the language her party attached to its ballot referendum to disenfranchise millions of rural Republican voters this April.

Six years ago, Virginia voters overwhelmingly passed a Constitutional Amendment creating a bipartisan Virginia Redistricting Commission. That commission drew a congressional map that was objectively fair. In 2024, when Vice President Kamala Harris won 52% of the vote to President Donald Trump’s 46%, the resulting congressional delegation was 55% Democratic (six seats) and 45% Republican (five seats).

It could not be fairer than that.

Now Spanberger and her Democratic Party majorities in the Virginia House and Senate intend to change the commonwealth’s congressional map radically in a distinctly unrepresentative manner. By cramming as many rural Republican voters as possible into one western congressional district, and extending the reach of overwhelmingly Democratic suburban Washington, D.C. voters far into rural Virginia, Democrats have changed a fair and representative 6-5 congressional map into a lopsided and undemocratic 10-1 Democratic advantage.

Voters in deep blue Arlington County, across the river from DC, would select congressmen for voters in deep red Augusta County on the West Virginia border. Voters in deep blue Fairfax County would be in the same district as voters in the Shenandoah Valley. There is no logical or policy reason for these changes. The voters in the new districts share no media markets and live hours apart. These changes would only be made for purely partisan reasons.

To add insult to injury, Spanberger and her Democratic allies have written the language that appears on the ballot in the most dishonest and partisan way possible. Instead of admitting that they want to throw out bipartisan maps and use partisan ones, the description on the ballot asks, “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?”

Fairness? There is nothing “fair” or honest about taking a map that matches the partisan outcome of the last presidential election and replacing it with a map that favors Democrats by a 10-1 margin.

Virginia Democrats claim, like children, that since Trump “started it” by calling on Texas to change their maps, Democrats should retaliate by changing their maps, too. But this argument ignores two facts. First, before Texas moved to change its map, the states with the most gerrymandered maps were all Democratic. Despite only 55% of voters choosing Democrats in 2024, 82% of Illinois House seats went to Democrats. In California, 83% of House seats were under Democratic control while Democrats only got 59% of the vote statewide. In New Jersey, 75% of House seats belong to Democrats, while the party secured only 52% of the seats statewide.

Second, the Census Bureau has admitted it bungled the 2020 Census, overcounting people in Delaware, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Minnesota, and Rhode Island (all Democratic states), while undercounting in Texas, Florida, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Arkansas (all Republican states), costing Republicans six House seats. None of these facts made their way onto the ballot wording of Spanberger’s proposed Virginia constitutional amendment.

Democrats nationally, not just in Virginia, have been asking themselves how they lost rural America and what they can do to get it back. Perhaps the party ought to consider that disenfranchising millions of rural voters with blatantly partisan congressional maps is a step in the wrong direction.

Early voting has started for the proposed change and I'm not seeing any Vote Yes signs in my AO, only Vote No signs.

It must not look too good for the dems because I'm already hearing that they are going to try to use the courts to nullify a poor result if the voters shoot it down.

Partisan Gerrymandering

Why aren’t Republicans fighting to end it nationwide rather than just when it works against them

 

[hadit]

Texas Governor Abbott Replies...

Texas's leadership has historically been generally representative of the population. Trump/MAGA want to change all that to disenfranchise the voters. There is no doubt that they are attempting to skew the coming election, none at all.

Thank youi for your attention in this Matter.

WW

Virginia has had no massive influx of new citizens. The only thing that has changed is who occupies the governor's mansion.

 

[1srelluc]

Partisan Gerrymandering

Why aren’t Republicans fighting to end it nationwide rather than just when it works against them

The passage of the Safe Act would go a long way to evening things out.....If the gop had the balls to pass it.

IMHO states with not Voter ID requirement should not even be certified in congressional/POTUS elections.

But that's another subject I guess.

 

[hadit]

Partisan Gerrymandering

Why aren’t Republicans fighting to end it nationwide rather than just when it works against them

For the same reason democrats pretend it only began when Texas did it. IOW, cute but not instructive. If you want to end it, end it.

 

[rightwinger]

For the same reason democrats pretend it only began when Texas did it. IOW, cute but not instructive. If you want to end it, end it.

Don’t look at me
I favor nonpartisan districting that isn’t allowed to look at political affiliation

 

[Billiejeens]

And you gave them one by trying to redistrict Texas and Indiana.

I personally see this as a bad thing. Few districts are competitive at all.

Right now, I live in a district where a bunch of lefties are all arguing over who hates Trump and ICE the most.

Just where you belong.

 

[hadit]

Don’t look at me
I favor nonpartisan districting that isn’t allowed to look at political affiliation

An AI that draws districts based solely on population numbers. Now where have I heard that before? Oh, yes, I proposed that.

At any rate, we get nowhere when democrats pretend gerrymandering began when Texas did it.

 

[SweetTea]

Actually, the rural inbred parts of the state keep wanting to leave, but no one really wants them.

Republicans used to do well in this state. Then your party went nuts.

Yeah, those darn people who choose not to live in an ant hill. What on earth are they thinking?

Democrats went nuts. EVERYBODY(except you) knows that.

 

[rightwinger]

An AI that draws districts based solely on population numbers. Now where have I heard that before? Oh, yes, I proposed that.

At any rate, we get nowhere when democrats pretend gerrymandering began when Texas did it.

Both parties exploit it

Voters should pick their representatives
Representatives should not pick their voters

 

[JoeB131]

Nice Dodge.

Not a dodge at all, dummy. Trump knows he's going to take a beating in November, and is trying to forestall it by gerrymandering states when redistricting has already happened AFTER the Census. (when it should be done). Except now he's finding that Democrats can do that too, and are more competent at it.

Once again, the disgusting bigotry of an arrogant leftist asshole comes through, looking down his pinched nose at regular rural folk who maybe didn't attend Columbia University or Harvard.
They're such lesser humans, you know: all white and stupid and dirty and stuff. Yuck!

Naw, they are just stupid. My contempt for poor whites who vote Republican is that they vote against their own interests. The only reason the Rural areas are afloat at all is because of generous federal subsidies. If you want to look at a truly bloated bureaucracy, look at the Dept. of Agriculture. One bureaucrat for every seven active farmers.

Your party is the one that's gone nuts. Neo-Marxist bullshit, envy, gender confusion, classism, sexism ... every ism you can think of all whipped up into a frenzy by the disgusting Democrat Party.

Naw, the nuttiness is you guys watching Trump screw up your middle-class lifestyle, but it's totally cool because you prevented a tranny girl from playing badminton with the cisgender girls.

 

[WorldWatcher]

Virginia has had no massive influx of new citizens. The only thing that has changed is who occupies the governor's mansion.

LOL,

Before Texas started this they had 40 EC votes, after this that STILL have 40 EC votes. The Constitution and Federal Law sets the allocation of House Seats based on the census and just because Texas gerrymandered does not change the number of seats. Your hypothetical change in population has no bearing.

WW

 

[hadit]

Both parties exploit it

Voters should pick their representatives
Representatives should not pick their voters

I agree. This jockeying is ridiculous.

 

[Marener]

An AI that draws districts based solely on population numbers. Now where have I heard that before? Oh, yes, I proposed that.

At any rate, we get nowhere when democrats pretend gerrymandering began when Texas did it.

If Texas and other Republican states hadn’t decided to more aggressively gerrymander, do you think California, Virginia and other democratic states would have done so this year?