Governor called referendum after president urged GOP-led states to redraw maps to protect House majority

Voters in Virginia on Tuesday approved new congressional maps intended to boost Democrats’ chances of retaking the House of Representatives, in the latest blow to Donald Trump’s effort to use mid-decade redistricting to preserve his control of Congress.

The tit-for-tat redistricting battle began last year after Trump pressed Texas’s Republican-controlled legislature to redraw that state’s congressional maps in a bid to oust as many as five Democratic House lawmakers in the November midterm elections.

California voters retaliated by approving new maps that could flip five Republican-held seats, and in Virginia, Abigail Spanberger, the newly elected Democratic governor, backed an effort to redraw her state’s maps following her January inauguration. Tuesday’s referendum could help Democrats win four additional House seats in November’s midterm elections.

  • DomeGuy@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    The Democrats introduced as their HR 1 a bill that would outlaw gerrymandering nationwide the last two cogresses where they picked the Speaker. They’ll almost certainly do so in January next year and two years later.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_the_People_Act

    All Republicans have to do to end the gerrymandering in VA and CA and who knows where next year is get on board. They could even get a national voter ID rule if they really wanted.

    Sadly, like Trump, the whole GOP is really bad at the jobs our tax dollars pay them for.

    • KC_Royalz@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      I have always supported a national voter id on the condition it’s paid for and people are automatically enrolled.

      Republicans would never go for it.

      Dems should actually run on this and then ask Republicans why they no longer support voter id

    • atzanteol@sh.itjust.works
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      2 days ago

      This is the correct approach. That bill is full of stuff that “everyone believes in” and should be what the Democrats hammer on every single day.