08/21/14: Redistricting reform should start now

This op-ed appeared in The Virginian-Pilot on the date shown.

THERE WERE no surprises in Tuesday’s special elections. Voters in each of the three districts performed as expected. Thanks to the last redistricting, it’s unlikely we’ll see an interparty upset any time soon.

In the two House of Delegates contests, the districts were drawn to be reliably Democratic. In both cases, including the 90th here in Hampton Roads, the Democratic candidate won. Perhaps the most watched of the three was the Senate race in the 38th District. Although the seat had been held by Phil Puckett, it was not friendly territory for any other Democrat.

The 38th is located in Southwest Virginia. Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney garnered 67 percent of the vote in 2012. Proving that the statistic was no fluke, members of the 2013 statewide Republican ticket all earned 64 percent or better there. Perhaps the most telling of all is that E.W. Jackson, the candidate for lieutenant governor, earned 64 percent of the vote, besting his statewide average by 20 points.

Years ago, I had a redistricting conversation with a now-deceased Republican member of the House. He patiently explained how the redistricting philosophies of the House and Senate were different. In the House, lines are drawn to protect — and enhance — the majority party. In the Senate, lines are drawn to protect individual senators.

In every election since the 2011 redistricting, that’s proved true. The 38th marks the third seat that Senate Democrats, who were in the majority and drew the lines, have lost in the past three years.

As one legislator put it to me, we already have bipartisan redistricting — in the form of Senate Democrats.

There was a time that special elections gave the minority party a chance for an upset. Notoriously low turnout — less than 5 percent of registered voters in the 90th participated Tuesday — used to mean that get-out-the-vote efforts could make up the difference.

That seems to no longer be the case, as districts are overwhelmingly one party or the other. Tuesday’s results in the 90th closely mirror the party performance from the 2012 and 2013 elections.

To casual observers, Virginians may appear to be schizophrenic, voting for Republican control of the legislature, a Republican-majority congressional delegation, and Democrats in the five statewide offices. Peeling back the layers, though, the first two outcomes are possible only due to partisan redistricting.

Despite claims to the contrary, Virginia is neither a Republican nor a Democratic state. Looking at statewide results in 2012 and 2013, all of the contests were competitive, where the margin between the candidates is less than 10 percent. The same should be true for the legislative races — or, at least, the majority of them.

We are six years away from the next Census, the basis for the redistricting seven years from now.

It is time to start the process of redistricting reform. Persuading the legislature to give up members’ ability to choose their constituents will be no easy task. Amending the Virginia constitution to allow for a different process — one that lets voters choose their representatives — would require that legislators vote twice to do so, with an election in between the two votes.

That the task is a difficult one should not stop us. Theodore Roosevelt wrote, “It is only through labor and painful effort, by grim energy and resolute courage, that we move on to better things.” Competitive elections across the commonwealth would be one of those better things.