Democrats thought they were so smart. After Texas, Missouri, North Carolina, and Ohio redrew their congressional maps to benefit Republicans, Democrats in California did the same, as did Democrats in Virginia, to “counter Republican efforts to steal elections” (right…). It looks like Newsom’s bunch out west will get away with alienating some 41 percent of the state’s voters, but it’s looking more like the goofballs in Virginia…won’t.
The Supreme Court of Virginia, also known as SCOVA, held oral arguments on Monday morning regarding legal and constitutional challenges to the gerrymandered congressional map that was approved through a referendum last Tuesday. Several Justices posed pointed questions to representatives of the pro-gerrymander side.
Virginia voters approved an amendment to the state constitution that transferred redistricting power from a non-partisan commission to state lawmakers, primarily Democrats. The final vote was closer than anticipated, with approximately 51 percent supporting the amendment and 48.5 percent opposing it. These numbers may still change as mail-in ballots are counted.
The outcome of last week’s election essentially allowed voters to endorse a gerrymandered map created by Democrats, shifting the state’s congressional representation from a 6D-5R makeup to a 10D-1R arrangement. The only potential barrier to the map’s adoption now lies in the courts, which leads us to Monday’s crucial hearing at SCOVA.
The issue being argued was the process that got the referendum in front of voters in the first place; its legal journey started before early voting on the referendum began, but SCOVA decided it wouldn’t consider the merits until after the votes were counted. Team Gerrymander acknowledged early in the hearing, after being taken to task by one of the Justices, that last week’s “yes” vote was irrelevant to the constitutional matter now before the court.
It comes in mens and womens and lets your friends know you're happy to express your views and don't care what anyone thinks! Cheers!
Because there was only audio and no video of the arguments, we’re left to our own imaginations as to how the hearing might have gone.
This is what I imagine the Dem lawyer arguing at SCOVA right now looks like. pic.twitter.com/LqsiCBwBEw
— Teri Christoph (@TeriChristoph) April 27, 2026
Team Gerrymander, which is not led by Virginia Attorney General Jay Jones but rather by outside counsel from California, went first in the proceedings. They quickly faced criticism from at least one or two justices, who pointed out that the General Assembly did not follow its own rules regarding the advancement of the referendum.
Things became particularly heated when Team Gerrymander struggled to properly define what an election is. While Democrats have advocated for early voting for decades, Team Gerrymander argued that the election should only be recognized as happening on that single day in November. This claim caught the attention of several justices.
Oops.
Here’s an explainer regarding Democrats’ circular, highly hypocritical thinking on all of this business:
? Dems argue Election Day is a single day, and doesn’t include early voting, in order to try to circumvent their unconstitutional maneuvers.
SCOVA HEARING: Sounds like we’re on solid ground. Justices didn’t like that early voting had started prior to the first passage of the…
— Wren Williams (@WrenWilliamsVA) April 27, 2026
Dems argue Election Day is a single day, and doesn’t include early voting, in order to try to circumvent their unconstitutional maneuvers.
SCOVA HEARING: Sounds like we’re on solid ground. Justices didn’t like that early voting had started prior to the first passage of the amendment by the general assembly. Also, made it clear that what happened last Tuesday has no bearing on the case before them today.
VA Constitution requires an “intervening election” between the first passage of the bill by the general assembly and the second passage of the constitutional amendment language by the general assembly.
The funny part is Dems are now arguing that Nov. 2025 was the intervening election. They argue Election Day is only on the first Tuesday in November, and early voting doesn’t count as part of the election! Can’t make this up.?
The Dems need early voting to be a single day now, not 45 days, for this to work. If it’s a single day, then it doesn’t matter that early voting started before the Dems passed the amendment in the general assembly the first time, because they did it “before” the election.
If Election Day is not a single day, and the first day of early voting is the beginning of the “intervening election,” then the general assembly did NOT pass the amendment language before the intervening election. The election had already started and millions of votes had been cast by then in late October.
We’ll wait to see what the Court says. I’m sure they won’t delay very long in their ruling.
When the anti-gerrymander team got their turn, they began with the story about a Democrat voter who regretted her early vote after learning Democrats decided last minute to jam through the gerrymander:
She voted early in the 2025 general for her delegate, Rodney Willett. After that, in the winning days of the election, was Mr. Willett that introduced this new proposed amendment. And she was very unhappy about this. She wished she could redo her vote, but she couldn’t. She was denied the opportunity. She, like a million or more other people, voted before this proposed amendment was ever even proposed.
None of these voters had any idea this was coming. And that’s not how the process is supposed to work. Because as I mentioned before, it’s the people, the people of the Commonwealth, the voters who possess the power to amend or modify the Constitution. And denying them the knowledge that this proposed amendment is coming through should undermine the whole process.
Yes, it should. The question on the ballot was jacked up and confusing (‘restoring fairness’?), the process appears to have been wrong, and Democrats did all they could to pretend they weren’t circumventing the state Constitution while circumventing the state Constitution.
Granted, Virginia taxpayers spent a lot of money to hold the election but that shouldn’t matter. If laws were broken and the state constitution was violated, SCOVA has no choice but to throw out this sham gerrymander.
