7" data-start="193">I've spent years following the fight to end gerrymandering in Virginia-- and writing about it.
I thought we had finally succeeded.
But now I'm being asked to vote for it.
As Virginia voters head to the polls on April 21 to weigh in on redistricting yet again, the question isn't just political. It's ethical.
For years, I followed Brian Cannon, a democracy reform advocate who helped lead Virginia's bipartisan redistricting reform effort from 2015 to 2021, via OneVirginia2021. I wrote articles about their long, determined effort to end partisan gerrymandering in the state. It was a hard-fought victory-- one rooted in fairness, transparency, and a belief that voters should choose their representatives, not the other way around.
Now, that reform is at risk.
The argument is not trivial, nor uncomplicated. Across the country, particularly in states like Texas, partisan redistricting has been used aggressively to tilt representation. That raises a difficult question:
Do we fight gerrymandering with gerrymandering?
When the other side plays dirty, do we get down in the dirt with them?
Or do we chose another path?
There's a case to be made that refusing to respond strategically amounts to unilateral disarmament. A few congressional seats can shift the balance of power, and that balance affects real policies-- and real lives.
And yet if fair rules are abandoned as soon as they become inconvenient, were they ever really rules at all?
There's another uncomfortable layer. A "no" vote-- which might be the more process-driven, ethical choice-- aligns with the votes of people whose motivations may be purely partisan while they are comfortably cloaked in the appearance of virtue. Meanwhile, respected leaders I often agree with, including Governor Abigail Spanberger and former President Barack Obama, are urging a "yes" vote, framing it as a temporary corrective-- just this once.
Any parent who has ever grounded a teenager knows this moment: the plea for an exception, "just this once," when everyone knows exactly why the rule was set in the first place.
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