Virginia Democrats Say Redistricting Vote Could Determine Midterm Success
Virginia’s April 21 statewide referendum on a proposed change to the way the state draws its congressional map could change the makeup of the U.S. House of Representatives. Supporters say that in addition to creating a level national playing field, approval of the referendum could mean the next Congress would be more responsive to the issues they care about.
Early voting on the redistricting amendment is already underway across the commonwealth.
Republicans currently hold a 218-214 majority in the House of Representatives, with three seats vacant. Virginia’s congressional delegation is six Democrats and five Republicans.
After President Donald Trump successfully pressured Republican-led state legislatures in Texas, Missouri, and North Carolina to adopt mid-decade gerrymanders, redrawing their existing congressional maps to make more districts favorable to Republican candidates, Virginia’s Democratic-led General Assembly proposed to change the Virginia Constitution to temporarily allow the lawmakers to redraw maps to restore balance nationally to the congressional district map.
Their proposed new map, designed to elect 10 Democrats and one Republican, would automatically go into effect if voters approve the ballot initiative and could determine who controls Congress in 2027. The commonwealth's Gov. Abigail Spanberger signed the bill approving the temporary Congressional maps on February 21.
All five Virginia House Republicans oppose the amendment. Rep. Rob Wittman said in a February 5 statement that “political competition elsewhere does not require abandoning the established process at home.”
The Virginia Independent spoke with several voters who plan to vote yes in the referendum or have already done so.
Karen Baker, chair of the Floyd County Democratic Committee and a former ICU nurse and federal administrative law judge, said the 2026 midterm elections will determine the future of the nation’s social programs and health care system. She said her yes vote on redistricting will help push back against Trump’s administration.
A vote for the amendment “might be a vote for [undoing] defunding of community health centers. Might be a vote for a lot of the infrastructure of health care in this country, which isn’t great to begin with, but this Project 2025 and Trump have gutted health care,” Baker said. “People haven’t really felt it yet, as badly as it’s going to be felt after 2026, and if we take back the Congress, we can fix that, we can change that, we can claw back the health care system that is being destroyed.”
Michael Passante of Tysons, the former chief counsel for the Department of the Treasury’s Office of Financial Research, left his job under the deferred resignation program after it was announced that nearly two-thirds of the office’s staff were likely to be cut as part of the Trump administration’s slashing of the federal workforce.
“Voting yes on the referendum helps ensure fairness for federal workers and contractors because Virginia’s members of Congress will better protect federal workers from the attempts to shut down or cut federal agencies,” Passante told the Virginia Independent in an email.
Gillian Sullivan of Fairfax City said she took deferred retirement after having been terminated as a probationary employee and then reinstated. She said she hopes the redistricting amendment leads to a Congress focused on rebuilding the federal workforce.
“I know that some in Congress have been trying to introduce legislation that will have a much higher chance of passing,” Sullivan said, with “a less MAGA Congress.”
“The goal, the hope, would be to start to rebuild the federal government and some of what’s been gutted by DOGE, and to get that started earlier, instead of like 2028 or later, get that started 2027, would help the American people get services and information that they’re no longer getting because of the cuts,” she said.
Celeste Garrett, a marketing manager for a green-building firm and a King William County resident, framed her yes vote as important for protecting reproductive rights.
“Already, federal funding for Planned Parenthood has been stopped,” she noted, referring to a provision in Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill, passed by Congress in 2025. “So that means that those people who cannot afford private health insurance don’t have access anyways. So it’s really important to me that we also have voices in Congress, because that’s where the power of the purse is. I would love to see Planned Parenthood health centers getting federal funding again, because people who are on Medicaid can no longer get reproductive health care now.”
“I feel like it’s impossible to be in favor of reproductive freedom and to be against this amendment, simply because what Trump is doing already is unfairly tipping the scales in his favor and not representative of what people want,” Garrett added.
Journeyman electrician Sean Garanzini, a Fairfax County resident, a member of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 26, and co-chair of the Fairfax County Democratic Committee Labor Caucus, said in a text that the referendum would empower workers and boost affordability: “The current administration is trying [to] consolidate power away from the working class into the executive and is willing to use governors and state legislatures that are loyal to Trump to do so. We, the working class of Virginia, must take this temporary measure of redistricting to counter the blatant authoritarianism we are witnessing. As Trump takes illegal actions across the world that directly harm workers with unnecessary rising costs, Virginia must stand together with one voice and announce that enough is enough! Sic Semper Tyrannis!”
Dan Gottlieb, a spokesperson for the pro-redistricting amendment campaign committee Virginians for Fair Elections, told the Virginia Independent, “A YES vote is about making sure Virginians — not Trump or MAGA politicians manipulating the rules — decide who represents them in Congress and the direction our country takes on the issues Commonwealth families care about, from protecting reproductive freedom and access to health care to making life here more affordable.”
Reprinted with permission from The Virginia Independent
