Virginia Senate approves mid-decade redistricting amendment in party-line vote

The Virginia Senate on Friday by a 21-16 party-line vote approved a proposed constitutional amendment that would give the Virginia General Assembly the authority to redraw the commonwealth’s congressional districts mid-decade. The move follows the measure’s 51-42 party-line passage earlier this week in the House of Delegates.

If lawmakers approve House Joint Resolution 6007 again during the next legislative session in early 2026 and if voters back it in a statewide referendum, the General Assembly would gain the power — in narrowly defined circumstances — to alter the state’s 11 U.S. House districts between the 2025 and 2030 census cycles.

The advertisement of the amendment comes amid a national wave of redistricting fights, with Republican-led states such as Texas, Missouri and North Carolina having recently pursued mid-cycle map changes — a trend Virginia Democrats say threatens to weaken the commonwealth’s leverage and representation in Congress.

The underlying amendment would leave intact the independent redistricting commission created via referendum in 2020, but carve out an “option” for the legislature to act between Jan. 1, 2025 and Oct. 31, 2030 if another state redraws its congressional districts for non-census or non-court-ordered reasons.

Democrats defend effort as safeguard

The Senate floor debate quickly expanded beyond the procedural question at hand, becoming a broader clash over the future of redistricting in Virginia and nationally. 

Sen. Aaron Rouse, D-Virginia Beach, who chairs the Senate Privileges and Elections Committee, cast the amendment as a safeguard against what he described as a coordinated attempt to weaken democratic systems. 

Rouse said Virginia had already “seen the purge of voting rolls,” efforts to “restrict access to the ballot box,” and bills seeking to limit early voting — all part of a national pattern he tied to President Donald Trump. 

“We do see evidence that the system is being rigged by a wannabe-dictator out of Washington,” he said.

Rouse said Virginians struggling under the effects of the federal shutdown — from unpaid workers to families losing SNAP benefits — “may want to say something about that” in the years ahead, and this amendment simply gives them the choice to respond. 

“What it does not do, it does not eliminate or dissolve the Virginia redistricting commission,” he said. “It is not a mandate, but it gives (voters) a say on how their country is being run, and how their representatives are representing them.”

Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell, D-Fairfax, said Virginia was confronting a reality voters could not have predicted when they approved the redistricting reform five years ago. He warned that states such as Texas and Missouri were now using mid-cycle redistricting to lock in power, while Virginia remains “unable to fight with one hand tied behind its back.”

“The Republicans doubled down on gerrymandering,” Surovell said, arguing the result would be a decade of congressional dominance even if Democrats won more votes nationwide. “That’s not democracy. It’s not what we signed up for, and it’s not sustainable.” 

He added that in an ideal world, Congress would ban partisan gerrymandering nationwide, but until then, “we can’t allow a certain partisan tyrannical majority to continue to gerrymander itself in a permanent power while we sit around and say our commitment to principle.”

Sen. Schuyler VanValkenburg, D-Henrico, said the amendment was a proportional response to “opportunistic, mid-decade redistricting” now being encouraged by the Trump-Vance administration. 

“We’ve never had a president threaten and strong-arm state governors and legislators for changes to their state’s maps, for partisan games,” he said. “Yet that is exactly what we are seeing now.” 

VanValkenburg argued that what Republicans truly feared was that voters might approve the amendment: “I feel pretty confident that if this thing does go to them, they’re going to pass it. And Donald Trump will have to face the music in 2026.”

GOP calls move “a power grab” that bypasses voters

Republicans countered that Democrats were misrepresenting the amendment’s reach — and more importantly, its consequences. 

Sen. Glen Sturtevant, R-Chesterfield, called it “a violation of the public’s trust,” pointing to the amendment’s release date just days before the election. 

“Over a million Virginians have already cast their ballots,” he said, arguing that voters never had a chance to know where candidates stood on the proposal. The move, he said, “completely undermines the intervening election safeguard that our Constitution requires.”

Sturtevant also pointed to the 2020 constitutional amendment, approved by 2.3 million Virginians, which created the redistricting commission and removed lawmakers from the map-drawing process. 

“They said very clearly that politicians should not be drawing the maps,” he said. “Yet this amendment would strip that commission of its authority and give that power back to the very politicians that the voters removed from the process.”

Sen. Mark Obenshain, R-Harrisonburg, echoed that argument, saying the amendment violated the constitutional requirement that an intervening election must occur before lawmakers can approve a proposed amendment for the second time. 

“That is being violated by virtue of the fact that this election is already underway,” he said, calling the move “a deliberate and clear effort to disenfranchise those million Virginia voters.”

Sen. Danny Diggs, R-York, argued the proposal represented a shift away from fair representation and toward national partisan strategy. 

“It takes the authority to redraw congressional districts away from the independent redistricting commission that the citizens voted to create in 2020,” he said, and “gives it instead to the General Assembly … to use congressional redistricting as a means of manipulating power in Washington.”

Senate Minority Leader Ryan McDougle, R-Hanover, accused Democrats of attempting to engineer a 10-1 congressional split in their favor. 

“This is not about options, this is very direct. We don’t care about fair districts, we care about making sure that there will be 10 Democratic congressional seats from Virginia next November. That’s what this vote is,” he said, referring to his colleagues across the aisle. 

Gov. Glenn Youngkin blasted the vote in a statement Friday afternoon, calling the entire process “shameful, fundamentally wrong, and illegal.” 

He accused Democrats of pushing the amendment through “in a party-line vote, in an eleventh-hour special session at the tail end of the election,” and said lawmakers did so “with debate silenced, members threatened with removal, and resolutions against political violence shot down.” 

But Democrats rejected the argument that the resolution was a partisan effort, insisting the public would still hold the final say. 

Sen. Mamie Locke, D-Hampton, noted that even if lawmakers pass the amendment a second time in 2026, “the same citizens who voted two to one against partisan gerrymandering will still have the final say.” She argued the proposal “in no way takes away any decision-making authority from the public. We’re giving them an option.”

Senate rejects GOP bid to keep maps with commission

Earlier on Friday, the Senate rejected, by the same 21-16 margin, an amendment offered by Sen. Chris Head, R-Botetourt, that would have instructed the redistricting commission rather than the General Assembly to redraw maps if the HJR 6007 passes. Head contended the commission, rather than legislators, should retain the power if voters approve the amendment.

Surovell pushed back against Head’s proposal by arguing that the redistricting commission was never the impartial body its supporters claimed. 

He said the panel was “not independent,” noting that it was composed of “half legislators, and half people that are picked by legislators.” The structure, he added, was effectively “designed to generate gridlock — which is why the Supreme Court had to draw the maps.”

Virginia currently has an 11-member U.S. House delegation — six Democrats and five Republicans. Some political strategists believe new maps could shift one or more seats toward the Democrats, enhancing the party’s national position, but critics warn it could erode public trust in the fairness of the electoral system. 

Virginia Mercury reporter Shannon Heckt contributed to this story. 

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