Interactive map of Virginia's current congressional districts
Virginia's congressional districts will be redrawn this year after a federal court
struck them down over racial gerrymandering, which was impermissible under the Voting Rights Act (VRA). Only the majority-black 3rd District, which spans from Richmond to Norfolk, was specifically found to be unconstitutional, but rectifying the situation will entail redrawing much of southeastern Virginia. Since the Republican-controlled legislature and Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe were unable to reach a compromise, the court will now draw the map and it is allowing the general public to
submit ideas of their own by Friday, September 18.
Here at Daily Kos Elections, community members have long published their own redistricting maps using the free, online Dave's Redistricting App (which sadly no longer works in Chrome). We would like to see what you come up with as a remedy. There are many possible alternatives and we have proposed one of our own in collaboration with JacobNC for you to critique below.
Republicans drew the current 3rd District so that the black population increased compared to the benchmark map from last decade. In 2009, the U.S. Supreme Court required VRA districts to have a majority-minority Voting Age Population of the relevant racial group. But in a 2015 decision concerning the Alabama Legislature, it held that districts couldn't mechanically rely on racial thresholds for their own sake without circumstances justifying them under the VRA. Since no such justification existed for increasing the black population in the 3rd District, it was struck down.
The previous benchmark 3rd District had just over a 53 percent Black Voting Age Population (BVAP). Republicans drew the current 3rd to be over 56 percent BVAP and in doing so diminished the ability of black voters in surrounding districts to elect the candidate of their choice. The court's ruling noted that this went beyond the goal of permissible partisan gerrymandering and relied on a racial quota. However, the court was deliberately vague about what the remedial map should look like.
Unlike the recent Florida redistricting saga, partisan gerrymandering itself wasn't found illegal, nor was any other district besides the 3rd. Under such circumstances, courts typically defer a great deal to the legislative intent of the original redistricting plan. Therefore, our proposed map makes no changes to the 5th, 6th, 8th, 9th, 10th, and 11th districts, while it attempts to minimize any changes to the remaining districts that aren't necessary to produce a constitutional map.
Click to enlarge
The largest change is to move the Richmond area from the 3rd to the 4th, and in exchange give the 3rd more of the heavily-black Southside along with suburban Hampton Roads. The end result is that the 3rd District remains majority African-American, while the 4th becomes over 40 percent African-American and would reliably elect an additional black representative. Politically, this map would guarantee Democrats another seat with the 4th District. However, it turns the 2nd from a narrow Obama district into a narrow Romney one, which would likely be secure for Republican Rep. Scott Rigell.
Note that Dave's Redistricting App excludes black Hispanics from the BVAP, which will make the current 3rd appear roughly one percent less black on the app at 55 percent compared to the court's figure of 56 percent. Furthermore, the data for our proposal above utilizes Census data from the Public Mapping Project, which includes multi-racial African Americans, causing the current 3rd to appear 57 percent African-American. In short, a constitutional 3rd should be roughly 50 to 52 percent African American if you are drawing the map in DRA. Here's a reference spreadsheet with the 2010 Census demographics by district for both the current map and well as our proposal.
Also, note that our proposal above uses Census blocks themselves, since legal plans must have near-zero population deviation, and therefore splits several of DRA's precincts, mainly in Hampton Roads. Unfortunately, the free DistrictBuilder app is no longer available online, so if you want to actually submit your own plan you will need familiarity with GIS software such as QGIS, the statewide Census block shapefile, and the population data from the Public Mapping Project.
So what do you think of our proposal and how would you draw a replacement congressional map?
