Augusta County senator helps introduce Bipartisan Constitutional Amendment to End Gerrymandering

A bipartisan constitutional amendment to end gerrymandering was introduced Tuesday by Republican Augusta County Sen. Emmett Hanger and Democratic Sen. Mamie Locke of Hampton City.

The amendment would take redistricting out of the hands of politicians and create Virginia's first Citizens Redistricting Commission, according to a press release from Hanger's office. 

The proposed 10-member committee would be chosen by a series of committees made up of leaders in both houses of the General Assembly and retired Virginia Circuit Court judges, according to the release.  

The Citizens Redistricting Commission would be tasked with redrawing the boundaries of all 140 General Assembly districts and Virginia's 11 congressional districts after the 2020 Census. 

Redistricting in Virginia was put under a microscope when a federal court ruled in June that the House of Delegates unconstitutionally packed African-American voters into 11 legislative districts and ordered the General Assembly to draw new district lines, according to The Richmond Times Dispatch. 

In November 2018, The Washington Post reported that the U.S. Supreme Court would hear the Republican legislators appeal on the lower court's ruling that racial gerrymandering occurred.  

Hanger and Locke's amendment brings the redistricting conversation back to the General Assembly while the racial gerrymandering suit continues. 

The proposed amendment would require that district lines should not favor any party or candidate, should not abridge minority voters' choice and respect municipal boundaries, according to the press release. 

The public would have access to all meetings, minutes and data from the commission, according to the release. 

The release added that 78 percent of Virginia voters support establishing an independent redistricting commission, according to a December 2018 poll by the Wason Center at Christopher Newport University.

“Virginia is always evolving, its people, its economics and its communities of interests and needs,” Hanger said in the release. “We need a system to ensure that we best meet these changes and take politics out of the process as much as possible. This is not my seat, but the seat of the people whom I have been elected to represent. We have an opportunity to make the process more public and I am pleased to support that effort as I have for the past several years and now work with Senator Locke and the bipartisan redistricting commission to push for change this session.”    

“This amendment truly reflects what Virginia voters overwhelmingly support, and puts citizens first, not partisan political interests,” Locke said in the release. “The Citizens Redistricting Commission would respect existing communities, including minority communities, and it would end gerrymandering in Virginia once and for all.”