Top Virginia Democrats have decided against exercising a controversial procedural end run around last week’s state Supreme Court ruling that struck down their redistricting, which wiped away a gain of four House seats, the Democratic leader of the state Senate told The New Republic.
The decision—which nixes a complicated idea, discussed over the weekend by Democrats, to replace the state Supreme Court and get the case reheard—is likely to anger rank-and-file Democrats who had hoped the party would respond aggressively to the ruling, which has made it more likely that Republicans hold the House this fall.
The decision also contrasts sharply with moves undertaken by many GOP state legislatures in the South, who are aggressively gerrymandering their states with wild abandon to erase decades-old majority-majority seats from existence, after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a key Voting Rights Act protection against racial gerrymanders.
That’s so dumb. All that they had to do was to declare that it was too close to the election, and preparations were too far along, and proceed with the new maps, anyway. There’s plenty of precedent.
Ohio did exactly this, like a year out. Just kept submitting the same maps to the state Supreme Court over and over until time was up.