The amendments to redraw the state’s congressional map, protect reproductive rights and gay marriage, and restore voting rights for the formerly incarcerated will next go to voters for approval.
Democrats in the Virginia Senate advanced four constitutional amendments on Friday, including one to let lawmakers redraw the state’s congressional map in response to President Donald Trump’s gerrymandering pressure campaign.
The redistricting amendment would let Virginia lawmakers pursue mid-cycle redistricting in response to Republican gerrymandering across the country. Under pressure from President Donald Trump, Republicans in Texas, North Carolina, and other states redrew their congressional maps last year in order to tilt them in favor of GOP candidates ahead of this year’s midterm elections.
Virginia Democrats argue that Trump and Republicans forced their hand and that ultimately it would be up to Virginia voters to decide whether to maintain the status quo or allow Virginia to fight back by redrawing the state’s congressional maps to offset Republican gains in other states.
“This fair and balanced proposal, advanced by the legislature, places the power to protect our democratic way of life directly in the hands of the citizens of the Commonwealth of Virginia,” US House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries said in a statement Friday. “The people are now empowered to decide what the congressional map should look like, not Donald Trump and his partisan Republican hacks.”
The Virginia House passed all four amendments earlier this week. The other three constitutional amendments that passed had to do with reproductive rights, gay marriage, and voting rights.
The reproductive rights constitutional amendment would enshrine abortion rights in Virginia’s constitution. The same-sex marriage amendment would remove the gay marriage ban still in Virginia’s constitution, and the voting rights amendment would create a consistent process by which people who have served their time for felony convictions can have their voting rights restored.
There will likely be a special election this spring on the redistricting amendment, and Democrats have said that voters would see a potential congressional map before they vote on the amendment. A spring special election is intended to leave enough time to vote on the amendments ahead of the June primaries and November general election.
The other three amendments may also be voted on in a spring special election or possibly in the fall general election.
“We will let the voters decide whether they want to live in a dysfunctional, new normal of a rigged system or fight back,” Virginia Del. Cia Price (D-Newport News) said on Wednesday.
