Feds OK House, Senate Redistricting Plans

By Amanda Iacone, Virginia Statehouse News Sunday, June 19, 2011

RICHMOND — State district lines that will be used for the upcoming fall General Assembly elections have been set.

The U.S. Department of Justice, or DOJ, has cleared the redistricting plans from the state Senate and state House of Delegates, Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli announced late Friday.

The announcement sets the stage for the Aug. 23 primaries to be held on schedule. The final determination by the DOJ also means that any pending lawsuits related to redistricting now can move forward.

Virginia is subject to the federal Voting Rights Act, and the Justice Department is charged with enforcing the law, which aims to protect the rights of minority voters.

Virginia currently has and will continue to have five minority-majority Senate districts and 12 in the House.

Senate Democrats pared down the percentage of black voters in the five districts compared to their current-day percentages, which Republicans say actually erodes the voting strength of blacks and is illegal. But Democrats contend that a simple majority — in one of the new districts just 50.8 percent of the voting-age population is black — is needed to meet the law.

Michael McDonald, a politics professor at George Mason University and a redistricting expert, said justice officials investigating Virginia’s map were concerned about whether Democrats had drawn districts with too few black voters.

“This is a very interesting development. It tells us nationally what the DOJ is likely to do in other states if those populations are pulled down,” McDonald said.

In Virginia, it means it is possible to draw additional minority-majority districts if the population of black voters can hover just above 50 percent, spreading out black voters across more districts, he said.

Republicans had argued that the percentage of black voters must be above 55 percent in a minority-majority district to satisfy the law.

The DOJ's decision could spur some lawsuits that would focus on creating a 13th majority-minority House district in the Suffolk area, McDonald said.

Republicans may argue in court that the Senate map is not geographically compact, which is a requirement under the state’s constitution, McDonald said.

The congressional district plans have yet to be approved by the General Assembly.

Control of the General Assembly is split, forcing the Republican-led House to work with the Democrats, who control the Senate, to hash out a compromise between two distinct congressional maps.

Republicans gained bi-partisan support for the House of Delegates’ district maps and the governor vetoed an initial redistricting bill to force the Democrats to work with Republicans to gain similar support in the Senate.

Southwest Virginia and the Tidewater region lost Senate seats, while Northern Virginia gained them because of population shifts.