Jamaa Bickley-King can’t help but laugh when recalling the partisan proposals to redraw Virginia state legislative districts that were unveiled by state lawmakers over the past two months. A federal judicial panel invalidated the current electoral map earlier this year, ruling that the Republican-controlled legislature had illegally gerrymandered 11 Virginia legislative districts by packing Black voters into solidly Democratic areas. Democrats and Republicans in the Virginia legislature proposed dueling maps to remedy the problem, with each side claiming that their mapmakers did not rely on racial demographics to draw new lines. Republicans even described their proposal as “race-blind.” Bickley-King said that just didn’t make sense.
“If a judge declares that an electoral map has been illegally gerrymandered based on race, you can’t undo the damage by simply taking race out of equation,” said Bickley-King, who directs the New Virginia Majority, a grassroots group building power in working-class communities of color.
The New Virginia Majority decided to draw up its own electoral map and add it to the proposals before the Virginia House of Delegates, which was given until October 30 to decide on a new map before federal judges appoint an outside expert to do the job in time for the 2019 election season. Instead of pretending that partisan politics have nothing to do with race, the activists worked with a data firm to draw an electoral map that would maximize the power of voters of color, who have faced political suppression and disenfranchisement in Virginia and other states, particularly in the South.
“If the judge says this community is getting screwed by this gerrymander, shouldn’t they be centered in the remedy?” Bickley-King said. “So, if you are not going to do that, then we are going to do that.”
The Princeton Gerrymandering Project compiled all of the maps into an interactive…