Redistricting stalled

The General Assembly has stalled over redistricting Virginia's 11 congressional districts. Virginia Republicans currently hold an 8-3 edge over Virginia Democrats in Congress's House of Representatives.

The GOP-controlled Virginia House passed a plan 86-8, with bipartisan support, that increases the population of eligible black voters in Democratic Rep. Robert C. "Bobby" Scott's 3rd District from 53 percent to 56 percent.

The Democrat-controlled Senate plan proposes to move some of the black voters from Scott's district, which cherry-picks black areas as it snakes from Richmond to Norfolk, into Rep. J. Randy Forbes' southeastern 4th District. That would boost the black voting population there to just over 50 percent, improving the Democratic candidate's chances substantially in 2012 while leaving Democrat Scott's district safe with about 45 percent black voters.

Not all black Democrats support the Senate plan. In June, nine of the Virginia House's 13 black members voted for the Republican plan, including some legislators who might one day want to succeed Scott. "Maybe Congressman Scott can get re-elected, but what about Kenneth Alexander in the 3rd?" said Del. Kenneth Alexander, D-Norfolk and former chairman of Virginia's Legislative Black Caucus.

The Constitution compels states to reset their political boundaries after each decennial census to account for population changes. In Virginia and 35 other states where legislatures are responsible for reapportionment, it's an unabashed exercise in raw politics with an emphasis on partisan advantage.

Both sides claim that the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which was intended to prevent Jim Crow efforts to suppress black voters, supports their approach. Democrats say the Virginia House plan amounts to "packing" black voters into the smallest possible number of districts, protecting incumbents in mostly white districts. Republicans believe the Senate plan will dilute the influence of black voters.

But the primary purpose of the Act was to eliminate poll taxes, literacy tests, and violence intended to discourage and intimidate black voters, not justify the partisan gerrymandering of congressional districts.

"We were not talking about electing anybody then. We were just trying to simply get people to go to the polls," said Joe Reed, 72, of Montgomery, Ala., chairman of the Alabama Democratic Conference - the black wing of the Alabama Democratic Party.

Until the 1990s, crafty mapping kept black power dispersed among multiple districts in many old civil rights battlegrounds, muting black voters' voices, said Merle Black, a political science professor at Emory University in Atlanta. "This was after a long period of the Voting Rights Act where, across the whole South, there were only five African-Americans in Congress from the South in 1991," Black said.

That's when federal court decisions mandated creation of majority-black districts. But Republicans in state legislatures quickly saw that the mandate to create minority-dominant - and Democratic-leaning - districts could make even more districts safer for conservatives. That contributed to the Republican takeover of Congress in 1994.

Sen. A. Donald McEachin, Richmond Democrat, told the Washington Times that he doesn't know when the stalemate will end. "I don't have a crystal ball," he added. "But I know this: As long as [Republican Del.] Bill Janis and the rest of the Republicans say, '8-3 or the highway,' there's nothing to talk about."

Most likely, President Barack Obama's Justice Department and ultimately the federal courts will decide who prevails. This is the first redistricting year since the act was passed that the Justice Department is under a Democratic White House, but civil rights division of the Justice Department has generally ruled fairly evenly on redistricting issues under GOP presidents, however, so it might not matter much who's in charge.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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