On Feb. 20, the Virginia House and Senate Privileges and Election Committees approved an amendment proposed by Virginia Democrats to hold a special election aiming to allow the Virginia legislature to redraw congressional districts prior to the 2026 midterm elections. Since this proposed amendment was approved, Virginians have seen an almost constant slew of ads telling them to either vote “yes for fair elections” or “vote against gerrymandering.” These ads, however, rarely explain what the contents of the amendment actually are, and often heavily push narratives by demonizing the opposing party.
Virginia has had a long history of gerrymandering. As recently as 2014, a congressional map was found to be unconstitutional due it packing African American voters into Virginia’s third congressional district to win more seats in the U.S. House of Representatives for the Republican party. In response, Virginians put immense pressure on politicians to increase the fairness of future elections. This eventually culminated into a 2020 Virginia constitutional amendment passed by voters to create a 16 member bipartisan commission to draw congressional maps.
Virginia’s current congressional map is considered to be exceptionally fair. Democrats currently hold six out of 11 congressional seats which mirrors Virginia’s competitive, slightly blue-leaning status. However, the congressional map proposed by the Virginia state legislature, if passed, could give Democrats a 10-1 majority leading up to the midterms. For many, this opens up the question of why Democrats, many of whom supported the bipartisan commission, would want to gerrymander the state.
The situation started in the summer of 2025 when President Donald Trump began urging Republican governors to gerrymander their states in an attempt to win Republicans more seats in the midterms. Texas’ governor Greg Abbott was the first to respond, calling for a special session to discuss redistricting that July. In response, Texas Democrats broke quorum to delay the new map from being passed for as long as possible. This garnered national attention and caused the special session to expire. However, in August, Abbott called a second special session and successfully passed the new map that could gain Republicans five extra seats in the house. California quickly retaliated by passing their own map that could gain Democrats five extra seats in the house.
“That just started a cascade of effects throughout the country,” said AP Government teacher Christopher McGill. “Trump supporting states started to do similar things that Texas is doing, and Democratic-leaning states kind of took the cue from California to do similar things to try to keep Democrats winning the Democratic-leaning seats.” Currently, 10 states have created amendments to redistrict, Virginia being one of them.
Virginia’s redistricting amendment and subsequent vote will be pivotal in the midterms. Several prominent news sites have commented on it, such as an article from The Atlantic calling Virginia, “the state that could decide Trump’s gerrymandering war.” As is often seen in votes that are as important as this one, each party is plastering ads across TV and social media to sway public opinion.
The wording in these ads are often questionable. According to an ad in favor of the redistricting amendment, “[The vote] restores fairness in our [Virginia’s] elections.” While this claim may be true on a national level, from an individual’s perspective the vote would be damaging a large percentage of the state’s representation in the midterms. These affirmative ads also often fail to mention that the goal of the vote is to gerrymander the state.
“This gerrymandering, whether it’s in Texas, California or Virginia, all of it’s not fair,” said McGill. “Saying that it’s fair is a little misleading.”
On the other side of the spectrum, however, vote “no” ads rarely mention the national dilemma of Republican states gerrymandering to gain more seats, and instead explicitly demonize gerrymandering within Virginia. Each side almost always ignores nuance, and explicitly pushes their own agenda.
However, this bias is not exclusive to Virginia’s gerrymandering race. “The language in all political ads is a little misleading … but that’s the nature of political ads,” said McGill.
Representatives of both parties are also trying to claim the moral high ground. Republican representatives are taking the stance of opposing gerrymandering, while Democrats are taking the stance of restoring fair and free elections. While both of these stances include bits of truth, neither really explains the situation as a whole. To see the full situation, it is important to look at the amendment on the national, state and individual level.
The national and state perspectives both include fair arguments for the amendment. From these perspectives the amendment’s goal is to counteract gerrymandering imposed by Republican states to level the playing field in the midterms. The amendment is also only temporary, and Virginia will return to a bipartisan redistricting commission in 2030. This is the perspective Democrats tend to take when arguing for the amendment.
The individual perspective may be more contentious and is the one that Republicans tend to use when arguing against the amendment. This argument is that the amendment will be taking away the voice of voters throughout the state, and that gerrymandering is always undemocratic. Blue politicians in Virginia often agree with this sentiment, “I believe that people should choose their representatives. Representatives shouldn’t choose their people,” said Democratic state senator Creigh Deeds in an interview with The Atlantic. Deeds, while opposing gerrymandering, still supports the amendment and map that would come along with it. “We’ve been pushed into a situation not of our own choosing,” he said in the same interview.
Both of these campaigns are also getting millions of dollars from dark money donors. Dark money in politics is when undisclosed individuals donate funds through non-profits to political campaigns. These donations have no cap for their spending and can influence politicians and their policies while not revealing the identity of the donor. According to an article from Cardinal News, in campaigning for Virginia’s redistricting, the “yes” side has received $53 million dollars from dark money, while the “no” side has received $29 million.
Even if the new congressional map is voted in, it could still face legal challenges in the Virginia Supreme Court. Currently, Virginia’s constitution states that redistricting will happen once every 10 years. Due to this vote attempting to redistrict mid-decade, these legal challenges will hinge on whether the map is constitutional, and also if these new districts fulfill constitutional requirements for a district.
Preliminary voting continues until April 18, while the main vote will take place on April 21. To see how your congressional district will be affected by the proposed map, see this link: https://www.vpap.org/redistricting/2026/
