The politics of the Virginia redistricting gambit.

Hard to believe that they didn't know their referendum was not legally suspect.

There seems to be a lot of knee jerk reactions and partisan crying over the recent Virginia and US supreme court decisions to invalidate the Virginia redistricting scheme. The truth is that it is almost impossible to believe that Virginia Democrats did not know that their plan did not follow the constitution, the laws, or the process required. To some degree they didn't even try. They were so eager to say that this passed, that they did everything to secure the referendum voting victory at the expense of following their own constitutions and laws.

To be clear, both mid-decade redistricting and gerrymandering is considered unconstitutional under Virginia law. The referendum in theory needed to ask voters to suspend both the constitutional protections against both the mid-decade redistricting as well as gerrymandering. The referendum as worded neither asked nor explained these constitutional issues. Instead, the referendum provided the clear as mud wording asking Virginians to "restore fairness" in the election process, providing some vague context that it would be a temporary move. But there was no legitimate way from this referendum as worded to understand what constitutional issues the Virginia legislation was asking the voters to approve. Many suggested that the language was thumbing their nose at the courts, while others suggested it was closer to the middle finger than a thumb.

The other issue at hand (which is what the Virginia Supreme Court latched onto) was the procedural requirement of passing the same referendum bill in two separate congressional sessions with an intervening election in between. In this case, the first passage of the bill took place during a special session that didn't start till after early voting started in the election they were claiming to be the intervening election.

Now as soon as the bill passed the second time, the lawsuits started. The Virginia judge in question ruled against the Virginia Democratic legislature for pretty much all the reasons mentioned and ordered a stop to the referendum. The Democrats appealed to the Virginia Supreme court for a stay of the lower court order. But they didn't ask the high court to overrule the original judge, rather they asked that they allow the referendum election to proceed and wait till after the election to actually rule on the merits. They found some precedent that suggested that ruling prior to the election was unnecessary and one would assume that the high court went along in hopes they would not have to actually rule if the referendum was defeated.

This is where it becomes interesting. When the vote passed, the same lawsuit went back to the same judge who ruled again that the referendum violated state constitution for a second time and blocked the certification. When the Democrats appealed to the Supreme Court to lift the order, they refused. Should have been a sign that they would be ruling against them, but Democrats remained confident, at least publicly. But fairly quickly after this the Virginia high court agreed with the lower court in the 4-3 decision that we are all familiar with. Democrats screamed bloody murder, demanding that the courts were now upstaging the will of the voters, even as they were the ones who demanded they not rule prior to the election. Media demanded that the decision was along Ideological lines, even as most of the judges were confirmed by both chambers in multiple years and in many cases the votes were unanimous.

Lastly, they put up the hail Mary of all hail Marys by asking the US Supreme Court to overturn their own Supreme Court. This failed without dissent, creating another round of howling by the liberals about how the various judges and justices are undermining the will of the people.

Now this was very likely the play all along. They hoped for the best, but were prepared for the worst. They didn't want the Virginia court to rule prior to the election so they could claim that the courts were undermining the results of an election if the ruling went against them. They asked the USSC to step in, so they could rile people up by accusing them of also undermining the results.

They had to know that their gambit was unconstitutional, they should have known that the ruling would go against them, and they had to know that the USSC was going to reject their appeal. They had everything planned out to throw the hissy fit that they did, and make it feel legitimate to the liberal true believers. Make no mistake, this was gas-lighting at its best or worst depending on your view.