Nearly 3 million Virginian voters saw this deceptive amendment measure on the ballot.

Question: Should the Constitution of Virginia be amended to allow the General Assembly to temporarily adopt new congressional districts to restore fairness in the upcoming elections, while ensuring Virginia’s standard redistricting process resumes for all future redistricting after the 2030 census?

The ballot measure passed 51.4% to 48.6% on Tuesday. Fairfax County voted in favor of the amendment by a margin of 71 to 29 percent according to FFXNow. The heavily Democratic jurisdictions in Northern Virginia tipped the scales in favor of supporters, according to preliminary results reported by the Virginia Department of Elections.  The constitutional amendment backed by voters bypasses a bipartisan redistricting commission to allow the use of new districts drawn by Virginia’s Democratic-led General Assembly. 

The four Republican Congressional reps impacted are:

• Jen Kiggans (District 2 since 2022): Virginia Beach 
• John McGuire (District 3 since 2024): northwest Richmond
• Ben Cline (District 6 since 2018): Roanoke metro area
• Morgan Griffith (District 9 since 2010): Roanoke County

If the gerrymandering is allowed: only Rob Wittman (District 1 since 2007, Richmond suburbs), would keep his Congressional seat. Virginia Democrats currently have a 2 percent advantage in voting over Republicans, yet Republicans would have only 8 percent Congressional representation within their own state.

The special Virginian election was funded by a $5 million allocation from the Democrat-led Appropriations Committee. Ironically, new Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger–ran as a Democrat moderate not in favor of gerrymandering. She gave the Democrat’s State of the Union address against President Donald J. Trump. 

The new Congressional map being adopted is credited to Virginia Senate Leader Louise Lucas (D-Portsmouth). However, a loophole exists according to Chad Mizelle, who served as a former chief of staff to the Attorney General of the United States and the Department of Homeland Security. In an April 21 op-ed on Fox News he suggests that President Donald J. Trump can stop this new gerrymander.

Mizelle states that in the earliest days of the Republic: Virginia and Maryland gave a certain amount of land (five square miles) to the U.S. government and created the District of Columbia. The Virginia part of the land, which included Arlington County and the city of Alexandria, remained part of D.C until 1847, when it was returned to Virginia to protect slavery via retrocession. Past presidents considered this retrocession unconstitutional. 

Mizelle proposes that Trump issue an executive order proclaiming slavery-motivated retrocession unconstitutional and return Arlington and Alexandria to the nation’s capital. An executive order would remove these populations from Virginia. Arlington has 241,887 residents and Alexandria has 159,467 residents.