Last summer, I calculated what the U.S. House of Representatives would look like if the U.S. used statewide proportional representation by party registration to elect congresscritters:
- Ain’t Representin’:There’s Only One Solution To Gerrymandering
- Ain’t Representin’ II: What Congress Would Look Like Under Proportional Representation
Those focused specifically on Texas and California, but since the gerrymandering wars have continued and expanded, I’ve done the same with this series:
So I may as well round this out with the other major state that’s gotten involved this spring.
Say hello to Virgina.
Virginia joins California’s side, trying to rearrange its districts to increase the Democrats’ presence in the House of Representatives.
As in California, they also did it by referendum instead of via the legislature (as Texas, Florida and Tennessee all did).
Unlike in Tennessee, the Virginia gerrymander would still have left a single opposition party district for the Republicans.
Not quite 100%, but still pretty extreme.
Virginia, when I ran these numbers, had voter registrations of:
- 49% Democrat
- 32% Republican
- 19% Other
But it had 6 Democratic representatives and 5 Republican representatives, which is 55% Democrat, to 45% Republican.
To actually represent their voters accurately, that Congressional delegation should have been:
- 5 Democrats
- 4 Republicans
- 2 from other parties
Virginia’s previous delegation was surprisingly close to accurate, actually, if you ignore the ‘Other’ category (since in a first-past-the-post voting system only the two largest parties generally win).
So gerrymandering that to 10 Democrats and 1 Republican is going from one of the least significantly gerrymandered states by party to one of the most.
Though Virginia’s gerrymander was blocked by its Supreme Court.
Not because it was so extreme, amusingly; it was blocked because it skipped a procedural step and was thus an invalid referendum.
More accurate representation and forcing the State to follow its own procedures are both, in the abstract, good things in a healthy democracy.
But the U.S. is not that, so it’s a shame to see a court doing the correct thing in this case.
- Still Ain’t Representin’: South Carolina - 2026-05-27
- Metaphorical Intelligence: On Generative AI And The Library Of Babel - 2026-05-20
- MAGA: Massive American Grift, Again - 2026-05-19
Apparently the procedural defect with the referendum had to do with a weird state constitutional provision that may have been defensible when horses were the fastest way for news to travel but is just a pointless delay in the days of the Internet. Whee; the East really needs to catch up with the 1850s.
The claim that the referendum didn’t follow the rule also appears to just be transparent partisan nonsense as well.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2026/05/virginia-supreme-court-america-gerrymandering-horror.html