Democrats suffer huge blow as Virginia | Political News
The Virginia Supreme Court on Friday struck down a voter-approved Democratic congressional redistricting plan, delivering another major setback to the social gathering in a nationwide battle against Republicans for an edge in this 12 months’s midterm elections.
The court ruled that the state’s Democratic-led legislature violated procedural necessities when it positioned the constitutional modification on the poll to authorize the mid-decade redistricting. Voters narrowly accredited the modification April 21, but the court’s ruling renders the outcomes of that vote meaningless.
“This violation irreparably undermines the integrity of the resulting referendum vote and renders it null and void,” the court said in its opinion.
Democrats had hoped to win as many as 4 further U.S. House seats under Virginia’s redrawn U.S. House map as half of an attempt to offset Republican redistricting carried out elsewhere at the urging of President Donald Trump.
That ruling, mixed with a latest U.S. Supreme Court resolution severely weakening the Voting Rights Act, has supercharged the Republicans’ congressional gerrymandering benefit heading into this 12 months’s midterm elections.
In late April, Virginia voters determined to ratify an unprecedented mid-decade redistricting aimed at boosting House Democrats’ benefit in flipping the chamber later this 12 months, a pointed response backed by former President Barack Obama to related efforts in a number of Republican-led states.
The referendum was seen as a major setback for President Trump, who described the vote during a tele-rally as a “blatant partisan power grab that nobody’s really ever seen anything like it.”
“Congratulations, Virginia! Republicans are trying to tilt the midterm elections in their favor, but they haven’t done it yet,” Obama wrote in a post on social media following the called vote. “Thanks for showing us what it looks like to stand up for our democracy and fight back.”
“Today’s redistricting referendum is about one thing: President Trump’s power grab. Last summer, he said he’s ‘entitled’ to more seats in Congress, and states across the country got to work to give him what he demanded,” Democratic Gov. Abigail Spanberger wrote in a post on social media before polls closed on Tuesday. “You can push back, Virginia. Vote YES.”
The vote centered on a constitutional modification that will briefly bypass Virginia’s redistricting commission to redraw voting boundaries and give Democrats the benefit in all but one of its 11 congressional districts. It was meant to elevate Democrats’ 6-5 majority in the House to a 10-1 majority.
Earlier this week the FBI raided the workplace of Virginia Senate Pro Tempore L. Louise Lucas, who led the redistricting charge in Virginia.
Agents confirmed up at the Portsmouth, Virginia, workplace on Wednesday morning with federal search warrants in hand. The search is said to a corruption probe, according to Fox News.
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