Districts should be Compact, not Contorted

Redistricting is done every 10 years after the census when new magisterial, state and congressional districts are formed.  Voters should be outraged at how redistricting was done by the General Assembly this year and this anger should affect how they vote in November.

Districts just drawn for the upcoming Virginia General Assembly elections were gerry-mandered to protect the incumbents - similar voters were combined in each district.   The state legislatures chose their constituents!  

A major gerry-mandering tool is split precincts. A precinct is the smallest voting group and is basically the neighborhood that votes at a common location. These units are split up at a cost to the taxpayer so that one group of voters can be separated from another group of voters. Each split precinct is estimated to cost local governments $25K because counties have to buy extra eqiupment and assign new voting locations and procedures.  The newly-formed 2011 districts in Virginia have over 500 split precincts! 

Redistricting should be done by a nonpartisan commission.  If a commission had redistricted the state districts, an estimated $10 million would be saved because there would be no need to split hundreds of precincts.  But even more importantly, we would have compact, competitive districts in which entire neighborhoods had the same candidates.  Competitive elections are the bulwark of our democracy.  The increase in partisanship in the past decades is directly related to gerry-mandering.

Please realize that the contorted district shapes were preventable.  The House of Delegates has been lobbied by many groups and individuals over the years to vote for a redistricting reform bill.  Since 2007 the Virginia Senate has voted every year for this bill but the House would not approve it. The current delegate of the 40th district is on the committee that is in charge of redistricting and is in large part responsible for the horrible, expensive gerry-mandering that all Virginia will suffer from in the next 10 years. I will promise to represent low cost and nonpartisan solutions to this and other problems faced by Virginia. Please Vote November 8th for sensible independent action, Vote for Dianne Blais

 

-Post by Dianne Blais and Joe Gallant