Virginia's Resdistricting Referendum

Virginia Supreme Court keeps redistricting referendum on ice, dealing Democrats a legal setback

Virginia's highest court on Tuesday refused to lift a lower-court order blocking certification of a redistricting referendum that could hand Democrats a commanding 10-to-1 advantage in the state's congressional delegation.

The ruling keeps the results of last week's narrow vote frozen while justices weigh whether the entire referendum was constitutional.

The decision is a sharp blow to Democrats who spent months engineering a ballot measure designed to redraw Virginia's congressional map in their favor. It is a win, at least for now, for Republicans who argued the process that put the question before voters was legally defective from the start.

Virginia voters approved the referendum by a thin 51.7% to 48.3% margin. But the margin of victory may matter less than the manner in which the measure reached the ballot.

Republicans challenged the referendum on procedural grounds, and the courts have so far agreed that those concerns deserve a full hearing before any new map takes effect.

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