“Democrats have gone all in on this. Barack Obama recorded ads that aired all over Virginia,” RCP co-founder Tom Bevan explained. “But making a six Democrat, five Republican congressional delegation 10–1, and saying that is somehow to ‘preserve democracy’ is absurd.”
“This thing is going to the Supreme Court,” Carl Cannon predicted. “The language is so egregious and so Orwellian — intended to deceive voters.”
The referendum read: “Should the Constitution of Virginia be amended to allow the General Assembly to temporarily adopt new congressional districts to restore fairness in the upcoming elections while ensuring Virginia’s standard redistricting process resumes for all future redistricting after the 2030 census?”
“To ‘restore fairness’ is a talking point. What they mean is fairness writ large—restore fairness nationally. They mean Virginia is going to be the antidote to Texas. Of course, California was supposed to be the antidote to Texas,” Cannon said. “What you’re saying is we want the national elections to be fair. But language like that in a referendum—when you’re going in there reading it—it’s intended to deceive voters.”
“My guess is the courts are going to look at this very closely,” he said. “Did voters really know what they were getting? Because it is not intended within Virginia to restore fairness at all. It’s intended to abrogate fairness. It is intended to be unfair.”
“The courts usually give secretaries of state wide leeway when they devise referendum language, but this is so egregious and so Orwellian, I wonder if it will pass muster.”
“When you draw lines like this, it affects your state politics for generations to come,” Cannon said. “It is very unhealthy. If you cared about democracy—which Democrats say they do—you would fight this instead of pushing it.”
“I think it shows how far our politics have regressed,” he said. “It is the Democrats—again—doing what they claim they dislike the most about Trump.”
You can see the rest of the conversation here, on Tuesday’s RealClearPolitics podcast:
