Has VA Created a New Model for A Reasonably Non-Partisan Redistricting Process?

It is worth paying attention to how the redistricting process appears to be playing out as it reaches the final stages in Virginia. Though the process was to some extent ad hoc, with the state supreme court creating a mechanism to carry out the process, the court might have found a new approach that might be worth thinking about more generally.

When the commission-based redistricting process broke down in Virginia, the state supreme court was then required to draw the districts. The court then decided it would appoint two special masters to draft proposed maps, one recommended by each of the two major parties. Those two special masters had to agree jointly on a new redistricting map. That process has now generated proposed maps that, at least initially, appear to be drawing broad support (to be sure, not all incumbents will be happy with the proposed plan, but that’s a sign that the masters followed the requirement that they ignore incumbency).

The court gave both political parties in the state legislature the opportunity to nominate three candidates to be special masters, with the court to pick one from each side. But the court also played a substantive role in overseeing whether these nominees were properly qualified for the role. The court refused to accept nominees who had played active roles in partisan politics in the state. For that reason, the court rejected the initial slate of nominees from the Republican Party and gave it the opportunity to nominate a new slate. The state constitution also imposed fairly detailed substantive policies that the maps had to comply with.

So Virginia ended up with a process that involved bipartisan legislative input; imposed substantive criteria through the state constitution; put the design of proposed maps in the hands of two figures with expertise in the legal and social science sides of redistricting; and placed the process under the overall supervision of the state supreme court (which will ultimately be the body that decides which plans become law).

If the judgment at the end of the day is that the maps that get enacted are reasonable ones, perhaps a new model has been created that is worth imitating.

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