Virginia voters are scheduled to consider a constitutional amendment that would let the Democratic-controlled General Assembly redraw the state’s congressional districts mid-decade. I am a registered Democrat with a master’s degree in comparative politics from American University. I grew up in California in a Republican family, have relatives in heavily gerrymandered states such as Texas, and now live in Virginia under its commission-drawn maps (Princeton Gerrymandering Project, 2021; Texas Tribune, 2025). I understand the political stakes of this ballot measure better than most. I will be voting no.

In 2020, Virginia voters approved Amendment 1, a bipartisan constitutional measure establishing a 16-member redistricting commission to draw the state’s congressional and legislative maps — the kind of hard-won institutional progress the anti-gerrymandering movement has spent decades fighting for (Levitt, 2026). The commission failed to reach its required supermajority in its first cycle, and so the Virginia Supreme Court, using bipartisan special masters, drew the maps that govern our districts today. 

The Princeton Gerrymandering Project, which generates roughly one million simulated district maps per state as a fairness baseline, graded the result an “A” in partisan fairness — “quite balanced,” with competitive outcomes possible for either party (Princeton Gerrymandering Project, 2021). That is the map Virginia Democrats are now likely to throw away. HJ 4 would permit the legislature to discard it before 2026 based on partisan advantage. Virginia Democrats are asking voters to dismantle the same democratic institution they recently helped strengthen.

WHAT A VOTING DISTRICT IS ACTUALLY FOR

Lost in this debate is a question that sounds basic but carries enormous weight: what is a congressional district’s actual purpose?

The answer is not a partisan question. It is a functional one. Congressional districts exist to group people who already share a world — common infrastructure, geography, civic institutions and a common stake in the same local victories and losses — so that a single representative can go to Washington and genuinely speak for that world. The phrase “communities of interest” is not bureaucratic policy jargon. It is the operational definition of fair representation in a functioning democracy. The Brennan Center for Justice describes gerrymandering’s two core techniques as “cracking,” splitting communities across multiple districts so they are too small to elect their preferred candidates anywhere, and “packing,” concentrating voters into as few districts as possible so their political power is nullified everywhere else (Brennan Center, 2025). Both techniques accomplish the same thing: they fracture the representative relationship between a member of Congress and the people they are supposed to serve. 

Residents of New Orleans, Oklahoma City, rural Maryland and every major city in Texas should not be lumped into districts with communities hours away whose lives rarely intersect with theirs simply because a party in power finds it mathematically convenient. I believe this is, at its core, a human rights issue. Democracy is not merely a constitutional right — it is a human right, and fair representation is its operational foundation.

I’VE WALKED IN MORE THAN ONE PAIR OF SHOES

I grew up Republican in California. When Donald Trump won the 2015 Republican presidential primary, I left the party — because no one could satisfactorily reconcile to me how Republicans had nominated a candidate who exceeded the combined poor qualities of the administrations I had been raised to detest. By 2017, I had become a Democrat. That journey across the full political spectrum, combined with academic training in comparative politics and a life spent crossing political and cultural lines, has given me a genuine ability to understand where people on both sides are coming from, because I have studied and lived as both of them. That is why I would never, in good conscience, deprive my fellow Americans of their democratic rights to benefit myself politically, no matter the cause. 

The California Republicans whose representation Gov. Gavin Newsom just diluted through his state’s redistricting push? Some of them were me. To support diluting their representation now would be the greatest political hypocrisy of my life.

“TRUMP STARTED IT,” BUT THAT DOESN’T MAKE THIS RIGHT.

I want to be direct about the opposing argument. President Trump triggered this national crisis by lobbying Texas and other Republican-controlled states to conduct mid-decade redistricting — a highly irregular maneuver designed to maximize Republican House gains before 2026 (Brennan Center, 2025). The Brennan Center estimates that maps used in the 2024 election already produced a net 16 fewer Democratic or Democratic-leaning districts than a fair baseline would have yielded (Brennan Center, 2025). Governors like Newsom framed their response as reluctant self-defense, arguing they could not “unilaterally disarm” while Republicans rewrote the national map (CalMatters, 2025). That framing is not wholly irrational, and I even agree with the underlying premise: if Republicans shift the House far enough through gerrymandering and Democrats do not respond, they may block congressional oversight of the Trump administration. 

I do not want that any more than my fellow Democrats do. But I refuse to sacrifice my love for democracy to save her — especially when the math doesn’t justify it. Even with a gerrymandered House majority, Democrats would still face the Senate’s 60-vote filibuster threshold and the president’s veto, and no investigation’s outcome is ever guaranteed. Meanwhile, the costs are concrete and lasting: the destruction of independent redistricting commissions reformers spent decades building, the normalization of mid-decade redistricting as a partisan weapon and the erosion of public trust that future reform depends on. 

A YouGov survey in August 2025 found 69% of Americans believe partisan district-drawing should be illegal, and 75% called it a major problem (Missouri Independent, 2025). That is the coalition that wins the long game. Gerrymandering in Virginia throws it away.

GOVERNORS WHO FORGOT FOR WHOM THEY GOVERN

Both Newsom and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott were elected to faithfully govern their states — and both have subordinated the democratic rights of their own constituents to their party’s national agenda. Their politics are not equivalent, but their abdication of duty to the citizens they swore to represent is something I measure by the same standard. 

The clearest repudiation of this logic came not from Democrats, but from Republican state senators in Indiana. In December 2025, the Indiana Senate voted 31-19 (21 Republicans joining all 10 Democrats) to reject Trump’s redistricting demands (Indiana Capital Chronicle, 2025). Republican Sen. Spencer Deery said he would fight federal bullying of state government “with my last breath.” If Republican lawmakers in a Trump-dominated state can draw that line against their own national party, Virginia Democrats can draw it too.

I WILL NOT SACRIFICE DEMOCRACY TO SAVE HER

Consider Vladimir Putin — not as a foreign policy abstraction, but as an illustration of something that should make every American uncomfortable. Putin’s grip on Russia does not depend entirely on stuffing ballot boxes. It depends on curating the entire system so thoroughly that the outcome is decided before anyone votes. 

A May 2024 survey by the Levada Center, Russia’s most respected independent polling organization, found that Putin commanded durable majority support in reported presidential vote choices even without overt fraud (Levada Center, 2024a; Levada Center, 2024b). A foreign policy analyst put it plainly: “Putin has reason to hope he will win the election without fraud” — the system had simply been built to produce that result (Liik, 2024). I have heard this confirmed by Russian friends who will tell you openly that their elections are corrupt and, in the same breath, that Putin would probably hold power even if they weren’t. 

Political scientist Rustam Galyamov argues that the Kremlin holds elections not because they mean anything, but because the appearance of a legitimate vote manufactures a social consent that raw power alone never could (Galyamov, 2024). Gerrymandering works by exactly the same logic. You still vote. Your ballot is still counted. But the map has already determined what your vote is allowed to mean. The Supreme Court acknowledged as much in Rucho v. Common Cause, calling partisan gerrymandering “incompatible with democratic principles” — then ruling that federal courts could do nothing about it (Brennan Center, 2025).

I left the Republican Party when it could no longer justify itself to my conscience. I will not leave the Democratic Party over this. But I will vote my conscience on April 21 — for the communities of Virginia, for the institution Virginia voters built in 2020 and for the straightforward principle that the people drawing our voting districts should not be the same people deciding who votes for them. I am honoring my community, my conscience and my country — even at the short-term cost to my political party. 

I will do so with my head held high.

REFERENCES

Brennan Center for Justice. “Gerrymandering Explained.” Brennan Center for Justice, updated Aug. 9, 2025, www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/gerrymandering-explained.

CalMatters. “California Republicans React to Newsom’s Redistricting Move.” CalMatters, Aug. 2025, calmatters.org/politics/2025/08/california-republicans-newsom-redistricting-texas/.

Galyamov, Rustam. “Why Does the Kremlin Bother Holding Sham Elections?” Journal of Democracy, 18 Mar. 2024, www.journalofdemocracy.org/elections/why-does-the-kremlin-bother-holding-sham-elections/.

Indiana Capital Chronicle. “Senate Republicans Reject Trump’s Plea for Gerrymandered Maps.” Indiana Capital Chronicle, 11 Dec. 2025, indianacapitalchronicle.com/2025/12/11/senate-republicans-reject-trumps-plea-for-gerrymandered-maps/.

Levada Center. “Election.” Levada Analytical Center, 20 May 2024, www.levada.ru/en/tag/election/.

Levada Center. “Mass Assessments of the Past Presidential Elections.” Levada Analytical Center, 23 May 2024, www.levada.ru/en/2024/05/24/mass-assessments-of-the-past-presidential-elections/.

Levitt, Justin. “Virginia.” All About Redistricting, Loyola Law School, updated Feb. 2026, redistricting.lls.edu/state/virginia/.

Liik, Kadri. “Expert: Putin Has Reason to Hope He Will Win the Election Without Fraud.” ERR News, 10 Mar. 2024, news.err.ee/1609278072/expert-putin-has-reason-to-hope-he-will-win-the-election-without-fraud.

Missouri Independent. “As Democrats Fight Fire with Fire, Gerrymandering Opponents Seek a Path Forward.” Missouri Independent, 22 Aug. 2025, missouriindependent.com/2025/08/22/as-democrats-fight-fire-with-fire-gerrymandering-opponents-seek-a-path-forward/.

Princeton Gerrymandering Project. “Redistricting Report Card.” Princeton Electoral Innovation Lab, gerrymander.princeton.edu/redistricting-report-card/.

Texas Tribune. “Texas Congressional Maps: How Gerrymandering Affects Voters.” Texas Tribune, 5 Dec. 2025, texastribune.org/2025/08/21/texas-redistricting-congressional-map-texans/.