04/06/11: The General Assembly assembles its re-election

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

PRESIDENT Barack Obama announced his re-election campaign Monday, while 12 or so Republicans jockey for their party’s nomination.

Former Virginia governor and current Democratic National Committee chairman Tim Kaine announced Tuesday he’ll run for the U.S. Senate. Former Sen. George Allen is already in campaign mode, where he is facing Republican primary challenger Jamie Radtke.

Those races will be on the ballot in 2012.

Meanwhile, the 140-member General Assembly is up for election this fall. So far, the Virginia Public Access Project (vpap.org) shows only seven contested races in the House of Delegates and seven in the state Senate. The filing deadline is June for primary candidates and August for general election candidates.

Three of the primary races on the Senate side will result in a contested general election race, but neither of the two primaries on the House side will. A couple of other contested races may emerge — both Sen. Frank Wagner of Virginia Beach and Sen. Tommy Norment of Williamsburg are said to be considering challenging Newport News Sen. John Miller, and Newport News Del. Robin Abbott may challenge Del. Glenn Oder, into whose district she was drawn.

For sake of simplicity, let’s just round it off to 20. Across Virginia, more than 85 percent of the General Assembly elections would have but one name on the ballot. Of the one-seventh of contested elections, even fewer will be competitive, decided by 10 percent or less.

This is what happens when you let the legislators draw their own lines. Combined with Virginia’s off-year elections, this is as close to guaranteed re-election as you can get.

Is it any wonder, then, that more people pay attention to federal races than state ones? There, at least, voters get a choice.

Elections are supposed to have consequences, but that is impossible if the election is uncontested. If a political party believes that its platform is in step with the voters, it should welcome contested elections, not suppress them. I guess competition is good for business but bad for politics — and certainly bad for political power.

Not just the maps themselves but also the timing of Virginia’s elections contributes to the lack of contested races.

Only three other states — Louisiana, Mississippi and New Jersey — will hold legislative elections this fall. Like Virginia, Louisiana and Mississippi are subject to the Voting Rights Act of 1965 requiring pre-clearance of redistricting plans. This additional layer of review further shortens an already compressed election cycle, as the census data were available only in February. Party primaries have been moved closer to Election Day to accommodate this. Candidates have to figure out in which district they will be living — and, therefore, running — in order to determine if challenging an incumbent makes sense.

The situation in Mississippi may be instructive. There, redistricting maps were released in March, but the legislature cannot agree on the new boundaries.

Republicans control the Mississippi State Senate while Democrats control the House, just the opposite of Virginia. Like Virginia, if they cannot agree, an election would still be held in the fall using existing district lines. A lawsuit has been filed to block those elections, should the legislators not agree.

Something like that could happen in Virginia. When a judge invalidated Virginia’s 1981 redistricting plan, House members were allowed to run in their old seats for a one-year term. (The Senate was not on the ballot.) Once the new plan was approved in 1982, they ran again for another one-year term in the new districts. The House returned to its two-year election cycle with a third election in 1983.

There are rumors of a lawsuit in Virginia. Easier than a lawsuit — and certainly easier than three elections in three years — would be a change to the election cycle in Virginia so as to allow more time for the districts to be drawn and the public to have input.

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Partisan redistricting in Virginia is the very definition of insanity. Between now and 2021, I hope we can figure out a better way.