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To address various concerns about the amendment, the Legislature passed laws that would ensure racial and ethnic diversity on the commission and would require the State Supreme Court, which has a conservative majority, to appoint a special master to draw the maps using the same criteria as the commission. Another new law eliminates prison gerrymandering, the practice of counting prisoners where they are incarcerated rather than where they are from.

These are good fixes. Still, the commission itself has significant flaws, chief among them that it includes lawmakers, who have demonstrated time and again that they shouldnt be allowed anywhere near the redistricting process. Foxes guarding henhouses are still foxes, even if theyre being watched closely by the farmer. But the amendment is an important step in the right direction, and in the end it succeeded because nine Democrats joined all Republicans to get the measure over the hump for a second time.

And what of those Republicans? Arent they to be commended for voting in favor of fairer maps? Sure, but it was an easy call once they were out of power, or knew they were about to be. The better question is, Where was their public spirit when they held an unthreatened majority?

Republicans continue to find countless ways to block efforts to make voting fairer and more democratic. In Missouri, Utah and Michigan, Republican lawmakers are working to undo citizen-led ballot initiatives that were passed, in some cases overwhelmingly, by voters tired of being chosen by their politicians.

And when Republicans do lose at the ballot box, they respond not by trying to appeal to more voters, but by stripping power from duly-elected Democrats essentially looting the shelves on their way out the door. This is the behavior of a party that neither trusts its own popularity nor accepts its opponents legitimacy, a fatal combination for a constitutional republic.

In light of this, many Democrats have little patience for calls to level the playing field. After all, why play fair when the other side doesnt? The answer is that the alternative is a race to the bottom, where voters of both parties give up because they know whatever box they check at the polls, the politicians have already made their choices for them.

In far too many parts of the country, thats the reality today. Partisan gerrymandering is a key reason millions of Americans feel the government is rigged against them. The good news is that this behavior used to happen behind closed doors, and now its being dragged out into the open. The more the public learns about it, the more they oppose it. Virginia voters support the new redistricting amendment, 70 percent to 15 percent; according to a January 2019 poll commissioned by Campaign Legal Center, which pushes for electoral reform, 65 percent said they favored districts with no partisan bias, even if it meant their own party would win fewer seats.

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A World Without Partisan Gerrymanders? Virginia Democrats Show the Way - The New York Times