Virginia Democrats celebrated with champagne last month. After winning about 51.5% of the vote, they gained the right to redraw the state’s congressional maps, giving themselves more than 90% representation. Their proposed map, while still likely to be blocked by the state Supreme Court, would cause as many as four seats in the Republican-controlled House to flip in the next election.
State House Speaker Don Scott (D) called the referendum a rejection of President Trump. Former President Barack Obama called it a check on the Republican power grab. The state media laughably framed this as a victory for democracy.
I call it “more of the same.”
Democrats used the machinery of state government to bypass bipartisan redistricting commissions created by voters to draw a map that gave their party electoral advantages in 10 of Virginia’s 11 congressional districts. The current Democratic score is 6-5, and the new map in the future is closer to 10-1 to seal the victory. That’s not democracy. This is dominance cloaked in the language of fairness.
To be clear, this fight is being waged by Republicans — at least in this current election cycle. (Some Republicans have accused New York Democrats of initiating this plan in the 2024 cycle.) Trump pushed for multiple Republican-led states to redraw congressional maps mid-decade specifically to solidify the party’s majority in the House against historic headwinds in midterm elections. Texas responded, where new maps could add five Republican seats. The gerrymandering arms race has begun. Republicans in Missouri and Democrats in California also joined the fray. While some states refused to participate – notably Republicans in Indiana – Democrats in Virginia opted for nuclear weapons.
But the competition between the two sides is not defense after all. This is a description of the problem.
The real losers here are not Republicans or Democrats. They are voters—especially voters who now live in congressional districts designed not to represent them but to contain them. When maps are designed to guarantee outcomes, candidates stop competing for entire districts and start performing for their bases. The election turned into drama. The only elections that matter are the primaries, which attract the most ideologically active and partisan voters.
The result is a Congress that looks less like the country it represents and is increasingly impossible to talk to.
Think about what competitive elections actually require of candidates. They have to win votes they wouldn’t otherwise get. They must convince doubters, solve problems outside their comfort zones, and build alliances beyond their base. Candidates who know they cannot lose an election have no one to answer to except their most reliable supporters.
Safe seats do not produce politicians, they produce career politicians.
For black voters in Virginia and across the country, this is an especially painful irony. For decades, majority-minority districts were used as a mechanism for black representation. Concentrate enough black voters into a district and you guarantee a black congressman. But crowded districts are politically neutral. When a representative wins with 80% of the vote, there is no leverage left. Voters who delivered a landslide victory have little left to negotiate. Their representatives do not need to provide services to them—just show up. Guaranteed seats breed guaranteed complacency.
I want representatives to have to work for every vote, every cycle. Voters deserve candidates who are accountable because failure is actually a possibility, not candidates who treat their districts like lifetime appointments.
Obama recorded a video urging Virginians to vote yes on the distorted 10-1 map, viewing the referendum as a defense of fair representation. This is the same Obama who, for much of his presidency and beyond, took an unequivocal stance against partisan gerrymandering. In 2016, he called gerrymandering “a rigged system” and pledged to fight it.
Opponents of the Virginia measure used his own past statements against him, pointing out the contradictions in them. Obama supporters say things have changed — Republicans acted first, so Democrats must respond in kind. There is logic to this argument, but it also places an expiration date on any claim of principle.
If your commitment to fair maps only holds true if they help your party win, then you have no commitment to fair maps. What you have is a preference for winning.
Again, the results in Virginia are not the end of the fight, as the state Supreme Court is still considering legal challenges that could invalidate the referendum entirely. The next round could be even more extreme, as recent U.S. Supreme Court rulings make gerrymandering harder to challenge in court. Florida Republicans have used the ruling as an excuse to draw a more favorable map for themselves. The tit-for-tat confrontation will continue.
But there is a better model. Several states, including Arizona, Michigan, Iowa and California – before recent reversals – had used independent redistricting commissions to take the mapping job out of the hands of the governing party. These are not perfect systems, as parties often find ways to influence them. But the principle is sound: Voters should choose their representatives, not the other way around. An independent commission with clear criteria for competitive and geographically consistent regions is a structural answer to structural problems.
Democrats spent tens of millions of dollars on campaigns in Virginia — many times what opponents raised. The money was used to purchase the map, not to convey the message. It works to lock in results, not compete for them.
If the party is serious about rebuilding the trust of working-class, black and Latino voters it has been losing, it might think voters can tell the difference between a party fighting for them and a party devising ways around them.
Winning a map is not the same as winning an argument. The first provides seats, but the second provides empowerment – a majority that actually makes sense.
Democracy can never guarantee results. It’s always a competition. When a party (no matter which one it is) decides that competition itself is too risky to be left to voters, it tells us everything we need to know about itself.
David Sypher Jr. is a New Jersey-based freelance writer and commentator.
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