While the eyes of the world were focused on the impeachment efforts against President Donald Trump in Washington, DC, on Tuesday, Gov. Larry Hogan of neighboring Maryland did something extremely important in beginning the long process of unwinding our current political polarization.

The Republican governor announced that via executive order he had created an independent commission he will task with redrawing the state’s congressional and legislative lines following the decennial reapportionment later this year. Known as the Maryland Citizens Redistricting Commission, the nine-person group will include three Democrats, three Republicans and three independents.

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Something *very* important for our politics happened on Tuesday

Analysis by Chris Cillizza, CNN Editor-at-large

Updated 1:19 PM ET, Wed January 13, 2021

(CNN)While the eyes of the world were focused on the impeachment efforts against President Donald Trump in Washington, DC, on Tuesday, Gov. Larry Hogan of neighboring Maryland did something extremely important in beginning the long process of unwinding our current political polarization.
The Republican governor announced that via executive order he had created an independent commission he will task with redrawing the state’s congressional and legislative lines following the decennial reapportionment later this year. Known as the Maryland Citizens Redistricting Commission, the nine-person group will include three Democrats, three Republicans and three independents.
“This commission is the first of its kind in the long history of our state,” Hogan said in making the announcement. “Unlike the partisan, backdoor manner in which our state’s political power brokers have conducted the state’s redistricting process, we want to make sure that this time the people of Maryland are actually the ones drawing these lines—not the politicians or the party bosses.”
This may seem to you, at first glance, to be a rather minor deal. Only the most ardent political junkies closely follow the re-shuffling and re-drawing of legislative and congressional districts that follow the decennial census. (Guilty, your honor!)
But simply because it’s utterly inside baseball doesn’t mean it isn’t important. In fact, like many things that the general public either knows nothing about or has a decided lack of interest in, how these lines are drawn and by whom has an outsized impact on the sort of government we have — and what the motivations of our elected officials are.
For decades, the line-drawing process has fallen, in most states, to state legislators and governors. What that has meant, in the main, is that when Democrats control the state capitol and, therefore, the line-drawing process, they create districts that are as favorable as possible for their side. Ditto Republicans — except that GOP gains at the state level, particularly in the 2010 midterm elections, gave them more line-drawing control over more states and, therefore, considerably more power.
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The strategy of both sides has been simple: Pack as many of the opposition party’s voters into as few districts in the state as possible while spreading out their own voters to make as many districts winnable for their side as they can. Innovations in redistricting software have made this slicing and dicing of people based on their party registration or past voting history an art form — allowing the line-drawers to literally go street by street when it comes to crafting new districts.
This has, of course, had unintended consequences. Maps drawn over the past two decades — by Democrats and Republicans — in places like North Carolina, Texas and yes, Maryland — have come under legal scrutiny for using political considerations as the sole motivator in creating legislative and congressional districts. Maps in which one party overreached have, occasionally, led to unpredictable results in which the party in power loses seats they expected to win because they tried to divide up their own voters among too many districts.
But these exceptions notwithstanding, the dominant trend produced by partisan politicians drawing the congressional district lines is this: The vast majority of members of Congress, on both sides of the aisle, represent what we would call “safe” districts — meaning that their only chance of losing their job would be in a primary, not a general election.
In 1956, for example, less than 6 in 10 House incumbents won with 60% of the vote or more, according to Vital Statistics on Congress. By 2002, the first election after the 2001 nationwide redistricting, 85% of all House incumbents seeking reelection won with 60% or higher. In 2014 and 2016, that number hovered in the mid-to-high 70s before dipping to just 63% in the tumultuous 2018 midterm election.
The practical, political effect of this trend is simple: Members of Congress have little reason to demonstrate their ability to work across the partisan aisle and every reason to be as partisan and ideological as possible in hopes of staving off any sort of primary challenge.

Which leads to what we’ve seen on display in Washington over these last many years: Constant partisan bickering and brinksmanship over matters great and small; the constant threat of government shutdowns; and a government that can barely function as its founders designed it to do.
And yes, much of that gridlock — not all, but much — can be traced back to a political line-drawing process that rewards reflexive partisanship and punishes those who stray from absolute adherence to their party line.

Independent or bipartisan commissions to redraw the maps in states — as Hogan is trying to do in Maryland — work to reorient the incentive structure for members by creating districts that are far more competitive between the two parties in general elections.

A Fredericksburg-area Republican picked for one of the citizen seats on Virginia’s new redistricting commission previously made vulgar or degrading online comments about President Donald Trump’s detractors, calling Olympic skier Lindsey Vonn a “bimbo” and actress Jane Fonda a “b*tch c**t.”

Before the November election, Jose Feliciano Jr., a 52-year-old U.S. Marine Corps veteran who listed his current job as an agent in the Federal Communications Commission’s public safety bureau, tweeted a photo of a pro-Trump highway caravan and said the only way the president could lose was a “rigged election.”

Screenshots of the tweets were circulated by the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, which works to advance Democratic interests in redistricting processes throughout the country.

In a statement, the NDRC said Feliciano’s online activity shows he is “unfit to serve” on the commission and questioned why Republicans in the House of Delegates would nominate him to fill one of the four citizen seats reserved for the GOP.

The Mercury could not independently review Feliciano’s Twitter account because it was taken down after he was appointed to the redistricting commission last week. Feliciano said he took the account down Saturday “as a protest to them suspending President Trump.” In an email to the Mercury, Feliciano verified the tweets were his. He said that, in anger, he “used some language I should not have used,” adding what’s “done is done.”

“Looks like other posts are singled out because I am pro Trump, well I am pro Trump,” he said.

Twitter suspended Trump’s account over the president’s role in inspiring the attack on the U.S. Capitol last week by the president’s supporters, violence Feliciano said he fully condemns.

Feliciano was among the 16 nominees for the commission put forward by House Minority Leader Todd Gilbert, R-Shenandoah.

His application included a letter of recommendation from Del. Mark Cole, R-Spotsylvania, who recently signed on to a letter asking Vice President Mike Pence to overturn Virginia’s 13 Electoral College votes for President-elect Joe Biden based on unfounded fraud suspicions.

House GOP spokesman Garren Shipley declined to comment on Feliciano’s tweets, saying “we don’t comment on redistricting matters.”

Amigo Wade, a legislative staffer who worked with the judges on the process, said the selection committee “will not comment on its decisions regarding the selection of the citizen members.”

The redistricting process hasn’t started yet. The seats on the 16-member commission, approved by voters in November, were just recently filled, with Gilbert and other General Assembly leaders playing a key role in picking which of the more than than 1,200 Virginians who applied were best equipped for the important work of redrawing the state’s legislative and congressional maps in a fair manner.

The eight citizen members were nominated by political leaders in the General Assembly and selected by a panel of retired judges. The other eight seats are reserved for sitting legislators.

Feliciano wasn’t included on the initial shortlist of finalists chosen by the judges, but they added him after realizing their list had no Hispanic members. In his application, Feliciano listed his race as White and Hispanic as his ethnicity.

With eight seats meant to go to Democrats and eight to Republicans, the commission wasn’t designed to be nonpartisan. However, it was generally understood as a way to avoid hyperpartisanship in redistricting.

One of Feliciano’s tweets was directed at the actor Peter Fonda, who made headlines in 2018 for tweeting that Barron Trump, the president’s youngest son, “should be put in a cage with pedophiles,” an apparent response to the controversy over immigrant children being separated from their parents at the southern border. Fonda later apologized for the remark.

In a June 2018 tweet to Fonda, Feliciano said: “you’re a piece of sh*t mother f**ker no different than you b**ch c**t sister!” His post did not use asterisks.

Fonda’s sister is Jane Fonda, an 83-year-old actress and left-wing activist who has sharply criticized Trump.

During the 2018 Winter Olympics, when Vonn failed to win a gold medal after drawing the ire of Trump supporters for saying she wouldn’t visit the White House, Feliciano tweeted to Vonn: “Congratulations great to see that you fell flat on your face, happy losing you losing bimbo.”

On Jan. 5, the day before Trump supporters violently stormed the U.S. Capitol, Feliciano tweeted a video that he suggested showed a police officer giving a “green light” for counter-protesters to “harass and attack Trump supporters.”

In response to a Jan. 5 Trump tweet touting the Jan. 6 rally that devolved into mayhem, Feliciano responded with a photo calling Trump the “GREATEST PRESIDENT IN MODERN DAY HISTORY.”

Felicano said he condemns the violence at the Capitol, calling the events a “complete disgrace.”

“Those criminals put a stain on all the good that has come from the Trump administration, and I hope each and everyone of them is prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” Feliciano said.

Though the NDRC attempted to portray Feliciano as a conspiracy theorist, some of the posts the group highlighted seem to be fairly typical of online conservative discourse.

For example, the group flagged a Feliciano tweet in which he said former President Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign was hit with the heaviest campaign finance fine in American history. That $375,000 fine has been widely described by news outlets as one of the largest ever.

During the Black Lives Matter protests this summer, when U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., said America didn’t “inherit” racism and slavery but instead “our founders and our government carefully created it,” Feliciano responded with a tweet saying the Atlantic slave trade predated America and began with Portugal. He said Kaine should “take a history class.”

“Explain to me how we own the slave trade,” he wrote.

A spokeswoman for the NDRC said Feliciano’s “tone on Twitter alone is disqualifying to serve on the powerful bipartisan redistricting commission.”

“How is Feliciano going to act as a commissioner working in good faith and in the best interest for all Virginians when he shares lies, misogyny and questions America’s involvement with slavery?” said NDRC spokeswoman Molly Mitchell.

Feliciano called himself a “descendant of slaves” and said he “in no way” questioned America’s role in slavery.

“I was only pointing out the fact of where and how slavery originated who started it and how it ended up on American shores,” he said.

Of Gilbert’s 16 nominees to the commission, all but Feliciano were White and non-Hispanic.

Feliciano said he was honored to be picked for the commission and plans to work for “all the people of the Commonwealth both Democrat and Republican.”

“I used intemperate language on social media, like millions of others have,” he said. “I regret my choice of words but it has no bearing on my ability to do the job.”

In his letter of recommendation, Cole called Feliciano “hard worker, a person of integrity, and honor.”

“I am confident he would be impartial and do a great job,” Cole wrote.

Cole’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday.

The commission, which will begin redrawing maps when new U.S. Census date comes in later this year, is scheduled to hold its first meeting by Feb. 1.

A panel of retired judges on Wednesday picked the eight Virginia citizens who will serve on the state’s new redistricting commission, finalizing the group that will handle the important task of redrawing the state’s political maps when new U.S. Census data arrives.

The judges spent hours trying to solve the puzzle of winnowing more than 60 finalists down to eight people who, by law, were supposed to represent Virginia’s geographic, racial and gender diversity.

“We’ve got to check a number of boxes here,” said retired Judge Pamela Baskervill, who chaired the five-judge panel assembled to choose the citizen members.

More than 1,200 people applied for the eight seats late last year. But the judges could only pick from four lists of 16 finalists submitted by four legislative leaders in the General Assembly.

The judges picked six men and two women to fill the eight citizen seats on the 16-member commission.

Four of the chosen members are White (three non-Hispanic and one Hispanic), two are Black, one is Asian American and one is multi-racial.

Three of the members are from Northern Virginia and two are from the Richmond area. Southwest Virginia, Southside and Hampton Roads will each have one citizen representative on the commission.

The group includes four self-identified Democrats and four who identified as Republicans.

The selected citizen members are:

Nominees of Senate President Pro Tempore Louise Lucas, D-Portsmouth:

• James Abrenio, 37, of Fairfax, a trial lawyer.
• Sean S. Kumar, 41, of Alexandria, a strategic advisor and lawyer.

Nominees of House Speaker Eileen Filler-Corn, D-Fairfax:

• Brandon Christopher Hutchins, 39, of Virginia Beach, a military veteran and health care professional.
• Greta J. Harris, 60, of Richmond, president and CEO of the Better Housing Coalition.

Nominees of Senate Minority Leader Tommy Norment, R-James City:

• Marvin W. Gilliam Jr., 64, of Bristol, a retired coal mining executive.
• Richard O. Harrell III, 74, of South Boston, a trucking executive.

Nominees of House Minority Leader Todd Gilbert, R-Shenandoah:

• Jose A. Feliciano Jr., 52, of Fredericksburg, a military veteran and federal agent with the FCC’s public safety bureau.
• Mackenzie K. Babichenko, 36, of Mechanicsville, an assistant prosecutor in Hanover County.

(Note: Some applicants were nominated as finalists by multiple legislative leaders, but the judges had to pick two from each leader’s list.)

The other eight seats on the commission will be filled by sitting state legislators.

The commission, approved by voters in a ballot referendum last year, will soon get to work preparing to redraw Virginia’s legislative and congressional districts, a process previously handled wholly by the General Assembly. Because of uncertainty surrounding the 2020 Census data, the exact timeline for the commission’s work is unclear. New maps are supposed to be in place in time for House of Delegates elections this November, but Census delays may make it impossible to redraw the districts in time.

Whenever the state receives solid data on population shifts, the commission’s decisions could impact the partisan tilt of the statehouse and the congressional delegation for the next decade.

Critics of the commission proposal warned that it lacked adequate provisions to ensure a diverse group of people would be at the table for the next redistricting process. But diversity seemed to be a top priority for the judges, with their discussion centering more on whether they were achieving the right balance rather than the backgrounds and qualifications of specific applicants.

Comparing notes on which candidates stood out to them, the judges initially narrowed the finalists down to a group of 19. They then realized their shortlist lacked any Hispanic applicants and didn’t include anyone from the Eastern Shore/Northern Neck region. The panel made a point of adding at least one Hispanic applicant (Feliciano) after retired retired Judge Larry B. Kirksey said he was troubled by the lack of Hispanic representation. But several judges said it was nearly impossible to create a perfectly representative commission given their limited options for just eight slots.

“’We can only work with the list of folks that came to us from the members of the General Assembly,” said retired Judge Joanne F. Alper. “We didn’t have access to the whole 1,200.”

Alper said she felt it was important to include at least one member from the Southside and Southwest regions, even though their shortlist only included White men from those areas.

“You need somebody at least that has some knowledge of that region,” she said.

Some progressives had raised alarms that the pool of applicants was disproportionately White and wealthy, pointing to an analysis by the Virginia Public Access Project.

The application process was open to everyone willing to fill out the form and provide three reference letters, but the judges also grappled with strict, General Assembly-imposed limitations on who was eligible to serve.

To prevent cronyism, the legislature passed rules barring political aides, lobbyists, partisan operatives and family members of elected officials from serving on the commission. But those rules also forced the judges to reluctantly strike one applicant whose wife previously worked on Capitol Hill.

Several judges said they were impressed by both the quantity and quality of the applicants interested in serving on the commission.

“I’m just amazed by the diversity, the energy, the brilliance,” said Kirksey.  “Not just brightness. There is brilliance on this list.”

The group of eight Democratic and Republican legislators who will serve on Virginia’s new redistricting commission will be made up of five men and three women, including two senior members of the Virginia Legislative Black Caucus.

The legislative members, who will wield significant power over how legislative and congressional districts are redrawn when new U.S. Census data comes in next year, come from districts that touch most regions of the state, ensuring some level of geographic diversity in the process.

Leaders of the General Assembly’s four political caucuses announced their appointees to the commission this week, filling half the seats on a newly created commission voters approved in a referendum last month. Instead of having the full General Assembly draw new political maps itself, the eight legislators on the 16-person commission will work with eight citizen members to draft new maps for the decade ahead. The application window for citizens who want to serve on the commission opened this week and will close on Dec. 28.

The map-drawing process could shape which party holds power in Richmond, which incumbents can safely win re-election and which might face challenges, and how much clout geographic regions will have in the state legislature.

As they work to set up the commission, Republican and Democratic leaders in the two chambers got to pick two appointees each from their own ranks.

Those appointees are:

House Democrats

• Del. Marcus Simon, D-Fairfax
• Del. Delores McQuinn, D-Richmond

House Republicans

• Del. Les Adams, R-Chatham
• Del. Margaret Ransone, R-Westmoreland

Senate Democrats

• Sen. Mamie Locke, D-Hampton
• Sen. George Barker, D-Fairfax

Senate Republicans

• Sen. Steve Newman, R-Lynchburg
• Sen. Ryan McDougle, R-Hanover

Each two-person caucus unit is important because, according to the commission rules, each one could block a map proposal even if the other three groups support it. That system is meant to foster collaboration and bipartisanship, but if the commission fails to approve a plan it would fall to the Supreme Court of Virginia to oversee the creation of maps drawn by appointed experts.

Six of the legislative members supported the commission proposal when it was passed by the General Assembly earlier this year. The two House Democrats did not. Nor did Speaker Eileen Filler-Corn, D-Fairfax, who appointed them.

One of the opponents’ primary concerns was that the commission might not be diverse enough.

“A Redistricting Commission that represents the racial, ethnic, geographic and gender diversity of the commonwealth is necessary to ensure every Virginian has a voice in the redistricting process and in our government,” Filler-Corn said in a statement. “Commissioners will need to be committed to inclusion and dedicated to a fair redistricting process that protects the vote of every Virginian. These are the standards for individuals I am appointing as legislators today and my recommendations for citizen members to the commission moving forward.”

In an interview, Simon, who fought the redistricting amendment hard during the 2020 session and in the run-up to the election, said he expects to “be there to sort of keep an eye on things.”

“I think we want to deliver to voters what they expected,” Simon said. “Which is a fair process and maps that sort of reflect the political makeup of Virginia.”

The Senate’s picks largely reflect seniority. Locke and Barker were major supporters of the redistricting reform push. Locke is chair of the Senate Democratic Caucus, and Barker was a patron of the constitutional amendment creating the commission.

“These two leaders have the experience, knowledge, and historical context of redistricting and also are keenly aware of the importance of making sure we have diverse representation in our Commissioners,” Sen. Louse Lucas, D-Portsmouth, who made the Democrats’ picks as the president pro tempore of the Senate, said in a news release. “Senators Locke and Barker have been involved in this process for years and I know they will be a great addition to the commission.”

McDougle is the Republican caucus chair, and Newman served as president pro tempore of the Senate before Republicans lost their majority last year.

The picks from House Republicans were somewhat surprising. Neither Adams nor Ransone is a member of the House GOP leadership, and neither are seen as particularly outspoken partisan warriors.

In a news release, House Minority Leader Todd Gilbert, R-Shenandoah, noted that both Adams and Ransone “supported the creation of the commission throughout.”

“With their combined knowledge and experience, I have no doubt they will help craft what the voters have demanded — fair maps for every Virginian,” Gilbert said.

With Virginia’s redistricting debate now settled by voters, state lawmakers approved a package of rules Monday for how the new, bipartisan map-drawing commission will work next year.

Democrats’ dispute over the redistricting commission, which almost 66 percent of Virginia voters approved last week, delayed the formal conclusion of the special session that began in August. To settle it, legislative leaders and Gov. Ralph Northam agreed to pass a post-election budget amendment allowing the commission to be set up and begin its work next year.

Democrats in the House of Delegates had opposed putting the language in the budget as the session seemed to be coming to a close last month. They argued voters should decide on the constitutional amendment creating the commission as it stood, without any improvements added legislatively.

On Monday, a few House Democrats gave speeches saying they still feel the commission idea is flawed, but will respect the result.

“The people have spoken in great numbers and they wanted to see changes in how the redistricting process happens in Virginia,” said Del. Cia Price, D-Newport News, an outspoken critic of the commission proposal who called it “regrettable that there was so much confusion and misinformation” about the redistricting question on the ballot.

The House voted 99-0 to approve the redistricting language. It also easily cleared the Senate.

Proponents of the change have hailed the commission as a much-needed change to a system that has given elected legislators free rein to draw districts to benefit themselves or their party behind closed doors.

“From the start, this movement has been about putting the voices of citizens above politicians and political parties,” the redistricting reform group OneVirginia2021 said in a statement celebrating the commission’s passage.

Voters approved a constitutional amendment creating a 16-person commission with equal numbers of Republicans and Democrats and seats split between sitting legislators and citizen members. Once new U.S. Census data is received in 2021, the commission will redraw Virginia’s congressional and legislative districts, a process that could determine partisan control in Richmond.

The commission’s members will be appointed in the coming weeks, and the panel has to hold its first meeting before Feb. 1.

The budget language approved Monday lays out who is eligible to serve on the commission and the process it will follow.

Among other things, the language:

• Bans people who hold partisan offices, political aides, campaign employees, lobbyists and others from being appointed to the citizen seats to the commission. It also bans political insiders’ relatives from serving on the commission.
• Stipulates that the commission’s makeup should reflect Virginia’s “racial, ethnic, geographic and gender diversity.”
• Declares that the commission’s records, including internal communications, are public and subject to disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act.
• Bans commission members from discussing redistricting-related matters with any third parties “outside of a public meeting or hearing.”
• Requires the Supreme Court of Virginia to appoint two experts, or special masters, to draw court-overseen maps if the commission and the General Assembly fail to agree on their own. The special masters would be picked from lists submitted by political leaders from both parties.
• Requires any Supreme Court judge related to a member of Congress or the General Assembly to recuse themselves from any redistricting decision. Current Justice Teresa M. Chafin is the sister of state Sen. Ben Chafin, R-Lebanon.

For years, redistricting reform advocates have been arguing something should be done to curb Virginia’s long history of political gerrymandering.

On Tuesday, voters overwhelmingly agreed, passing a constitutional amendment that largely strips the General Assembly of its authority to redraw legislative and congressional districts, a historic shift in a system that dates back to Virginia’s colonial beginnings.

Wielding that power instead will be a 16-member, bipartisan redistricting commission made up of both sitting lawmakers and citizens, a panel designed to conduct its business publicly as opposed to the secretive, insider-driven processes of the past.

In a year of intense partisan division, the idea of depoliticizing the redistricting process seemed to draw broad support across parties and regions. With almost 90 percent of expected votes counted early Wednesday morning, about 67 percent of Virginians had voted in favor of the amendment.

Though some votes were still uncounted, FairMapsVA, the anti-gerrymandering group pushing for the amendment with its parent organization OneVirginia2021, declared victory around 12:40 a.m., saying the result came after six years of work.

“Tonight, we celebrate the formation of Virginia’s first citizen-led redistricting commission; and tomorrow, we get back to work to ensure the commission’s work is successful,” the group said in a statement.

The outcome ensures that the next redistricting process — which could determine how much representation Virginia communities have, which political party is likely to hold power in Richmond and which incumbents are or aren’t safe from election challenges — will have at least some direct citizen involvement for the first time ever.

Once a decade, the state uses new U.S. Census data to redraw legislative and congressional maps to ensure each district has roughly the same population. How those districts are drawn can have far-reaching impacts, affecting which party can win a majority of the seats, electoral competitiveness, how much political power minority communities have and which individual politicians get to represent a particular area. So it’s no surprise that changing who draws those maps was a contentious endeavor.

The vote on the redistricting question, coupled with strong Democratic victories in Tuesday’s statewide races, reveals a disconnect between some Democratic leaders and the party’s voters.

Many Democrats in the House of Delegates voted against the commission proposal this year after voting for it in 2019, a reversal they said came after they had more time to consider its flaws. The Democratic Party of Virginia also officially opposed the initiative despite the fact that it was supported by senior Virginia Democrats like U.S. Sens. Tim Kaine and Mark Warner. Had the amendment failed, the Democratic-led General Assembly and Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam would have the final say on new maps.

Fair Districts VA, an advocacy group formed by Democrats opposed to the ballot question, conceded defeat early Wednesday morning, saying it had been “fighting an uphill battle.” The group demanded that more be done to pursue stronger redistricting reform going forward.

“The people who pushed Amendment 1 know of its flaws – and it is now incumbent upon them to seek real solutions to fix those flaws,” Fair Districts said in a news release.

The proposal was supported by national good-government groups as well as the ACLU of Virginia, the League of Women Voters of Virginia and the Virginia Chamber of Commerce. But it fell short of what many redistricting reformers envisioned: a fully independent commission that gives incumbent politicians no power whatsoever to draw their own districts.

Because Virginia has no process for citizen-initiated constitutional amendments, it’s always been up to state lawmakers to willingly give up their redistricting power. In previous years, the Republican-led House of Delegates routinely blocked redistricting reform efforts. But GOP leaders changed their position in 2019 after federal courts redrew some House districts to correct Republican-led racial gerrymandering, a development that helped put the House GOP majority in jeopardy heading into the 2019 elections.

Reserving half the seats for legislators was seen as a compromise that still gives General Assembly leaders a hand in redistricting, which can have career-ending consequences for incumbents whose districts change dramatically.

Maps produced by the new commission will go to the General Assembly for an up-or-down vote. If the commission can’t agree on maps or the General Assembly rejects the commission’s maps, the Supreme Court of Virginia would conduct a court-supervised redistricting process.

Opponents have also argued the commission proposal lacks explicit protections for minority communities. Supporters say the amendment achieves that by referencing the federal Voting Rights Act and specifying that districts will allow “opportunities for racial and ethnic communities to elect candidates of their choice.”

The insidery arguments about the commission’s particulars seemed to escape many Virginians.

Some voters said they hadn’t heard about the redistricting amendment until they saw it on their ballot Tuesday, drawing disparate conclusions about its potential impact from the one-paragraph description they read in the voting booth.

At a polling place in downtown Richmond, none sounded especially confident in their interpretations.

“It’s so convoluted if you read it from the back of a voter ballot,” said Patrick Ogden, who ultimately decided to vote no because he opposed the idea of stripping the governor of his authority to veto redistricting plans and giving the unelected members of the Supreme Court of Virginia a role in the process. “I believe the governor should have a little more say. At least that’s what I read from it.”

Sasha Atkins, who also voted no, said the explanation on the ballot made her worry the amendment wouldn’t give regular citizens enough of a say in the redistricting process. “We should be representing ourselves,” she said.

Another voter at the same polling place said she voted for the measure, but only because she thought it addressed how local school districts redraw their boundaries.

In Southwest Virginia’s Franklin County, Gary Holden of Ferrum said he supported the commission while voting “straight-ticket Democrat.” He said he saw the commission as preferable to the current system “so long as it’s made up of equal parties.”

In Virginia Beach, 44-year-old schoolteacher Scott Parker said he voted for the redistricting amendment because he wanted to bring more logic to the process.

At the same polling place, Janise Jenkins, a 39-year-old property manager, also said the amendment would be an improvement on the status quo.

“It will be fair, more reasonable,” she said.

The commission was approved just in time to handle the redistricting process scheduled for 2021, but pandemic-related delays with the census data could create severe timing issues. With all 100 seats in the House of Delegates up for election next year, officials will have to rush to get new districts in place in time for late-summer primaries and a shortened general-election cycle.

If the delays make it impossible to draw new districts in time, the House elections could potentially be run using existing district lines. The state could also be left scrambling if there appear to be major problems with the census count conducted in such a chaotic year.

In the short term, officials will get to work setting up the commission and deciding who will serve on it. By Nov. 15, the state Supreme Court is supposed to submit a list of retired judges willing to serve on a selection committee that will pick the citizen members from nominees floated by General Assembly leaders. The commission’s eight legislative members are scheduled to be appointed by Dec. 1.

The commission has to hold its first public meeting by Feb. 1.

First, the General Assembly will reconvene to pass additional rules for how the commission will work. Those rules were being considered for inclusion in the state budget during the recent special session, but the fierce intraparty debate among Democrats over the amendment led lawmakers to keep the budget process open until after the outcome was known.

With the amendment approved by voters, the legislature is set to return next week to finish that work.

Here we go again, Virginia, trailing the pack at yet another critical turn in combating the global coronavirus pandemic — the rollout of the lifesaving vaccine that could finally break the back of COVID-19. And if you’re a Democrat in Virginia, particularly one who’s seeking statewide office this fall, this isn’t what you had hoped to see.

It feels like last March, when the coronavirus caught the commonwealth flat-footed and plodding in its initial mobilization against the novel and then-mysterious plague, forcing Gov. Ralph Northam’s administration to play catch-up.

Yes, catch up Virginia did. Eventually. Northam, the only physician governor of any U.S. state, finally issued forceful and unambiguous orders to kick Virginia’s protective response into the same high gear that Maryland, Ohio, New York and other states had already hit. Schools closed, as did most businesses not deemed essential. Home sheltering, working and learning remotely, social distancing, hand washing and mask wearing were the order of the day. Literally.

City streets fell silent and abandoned. For weeks on end, springtime gusts whistled across sprawling, empty shopping mall parking lots. Small businesses — and even some large ones — took it in the neck, particularly mom-and-pop restaurants, bars, retailers, gyms and cinemas. A chilling number of those shops and offices and eateries died, in many cases taking family livelihoods and life savings with them, and they will never be resurrected. Those were lifesaving steps Virginia had to take and the government was justified in taking them.

Even then, just when Northam had emphatically laid down the law on requiring the use of face coverings, he undermined his own messaging when photographs of him laughing it up unmasked and huddled close with others for selfies on Virginia Beach’s Boardwalk began trending across social media.

By summer, Virginia had ramped up testing, plateaued its numbers of COVID-19 cases and related deaths, and driven down the percentages of positive coronavirus tests. Restrictions were eased. By autumn, ours was among the states faring the best with the coronavirus. But getting there was like pulling teeth.

For reasons still not clear, Northam’s Department of Health balked at making public the granular coronavirus testing data for extended care facilities that families of elderly, ailing and vulnerable people could use to make informed decisions about their loved ones. That was particularly galling after an outbreak at a Henrico County nursing home was among the nation’s deadliest in the early weeks of the pandemic. Eventually, faced with withering media coverage and public outrage, the administration relented and, without explanation, made the data available.

The VDH’s reluctance to provide specific, actionable guidance last summer to school districts on whether, when and how to reopen classrooms or continue virtual schooling created chaos and conflict among faculty, administrators and parents within school divisions and resulted in a crazy-quilt patchwork of differing regimens across the state.

And so it goes.

Last Thursday, with the respected Becker’s Hospital Review ranking Virginia’s vaccination effort the fifth least effective in the nation, Northam found himself promising to jump-start a torpid immunization effort one month after Virginia got the first of its nearly 846,000 vaccine doses. According to Becker’s, only about 218,000 — barely over one-fourth — of those doses have been injected into the arms of Virginians.

Compare that to West Virginia, which has dispensed nearly 70 percent of its approximately 161,000 doses — the nation’s best rate. Maryland and North Carolina have each dispensed about 32 percent of their vaccine allotments, while Kentucky and Tennessee have injected 43 percent and 44 percent, respectively, of their doses. Idaho, Hawaii, Alabama and Georgia (the nation’s worst at just under 20 percent) were the only four states that performed worse than Virginia.

At Thursday’s news conference, Dr. Danny Avula, Northam’s newly appointed vaccine czar, said that to achieve a pace that puts the commonwealth ahead of the virus and returns life to normal sooner rather than later, Virginia needs to dispense about 50,000 doses daily. Last week, the state was at about 30 percent of that pace. As of Friday, 88 of the state’s 133 localities remained mired in Phase 1A, the first phase of the vaccine rollout that includes frontline healthcare workers, first-responders and nursing home residents. Only one-third of the localities, clustered mostly in Southwest Virginia, the Eastern Shore and Northern Virginia, had advanced to Phase 1B, which includes people 65 and older, police and firefighters, teachers, grocery workers and essential government workers.

Northam said he was “pleased” with a pace in which only one out of every four doses the state received a month ago has been injected.

“Everyone will need to be patient. It’s going to happen as fast as it can be done and it’s moving faster every day,” he said Thursday. “Monday, we vaccinated more than 15,000 people. Tuesday, it was more than 17,000.”

When Virginia is the laggard behind every one of its contiguous neighbors, isn’t it fair to ask why? Two weeks ago in Tennessee, for instance, officials in Sullivan County opened a max vaccination site at the Bristol Motor Speedway Dragway, a 10-minute drive from the Virginia border. On its first day, Jan. 7, the site ran out of doses by noon. Vaccinations are scheduled for four days starting this week at Richmond’s enormous car-racing venue. The sprawling NASCAR stadium in Martinsville also volunteered to be a mass-vaccination venue if needed, but thus far has no takers.

Patience, your excellency, is in short supply. After a life-altering (and, in more than 5,600 cases in Virginia and nearly 400,000 nationally, life-ending) 11 months of pandemic, a searing summer of racial unrest, an election from hell and an even worse post-election in which a defeated president instigated the attempted violent overthrow of Congress in a vain effort to keep the victor from taking office, this might not be the most opportune time to prescribe a chill pill.

And, boy, did Virginia’s out-of-power, victory-starved Republicans notice.

Del. Kirk Cox, a conservative former House speaker and a declared GOP candidate for governor, assailed the Northam administration’s lethargic response in a statement.

“While … it’s good news that he’s trying to speed up vaccine distribution, the truth is ‘better late than never’ just doesn’t cut it,” Cox said, adding that he urged Northam “to take decisive action over a week ago.”

Northam could still turn around Virginia’s thus-far inauspicious vaccine deployment, just as his administration eventually energized Virginia’s leisurely initial response to the pandemic last spring. But if he doesn’t, it could hand Republicans another significant election-year bouquet.

This year, the GOP won’t run in the shadow of a president so polarizing that he just cost once-ruby-red Georgia both of its Republican U.S. senators, flipping control of the Senate to the Democrats. They’ll also have a raft of brochure issues courtesy of Virginia Democrats, including proposals to end the death penalty and legalize marijuana, plus last year’s parole board debacle. Those issues resonate among conservatives and many centrists and could buttress a GOP argument that Democrats have gone too far left for an electorate that traditionally rewards moderation.

That said, Republicans haven’t found an opportunity over the past dozen years they couldn’t squander. They could do it again by nominating Amanda Chase, a Trump-style nationalist who urged the president to declare martial law to stay in power and whose incendiary claims have gotten her suspended from Facebook and ostracized by her own party.

The vaccine issue is one that voters will remember in November. The vaccine represents a genuine human triumph, our deliverance from the pain and loss that the past year has inflicted upon us. Government must get this right, and those in charge of it should answer for the consequences if it doesn’t.

News that the federal government has already exhausted its supply of “reserve” COVID-19 vaccines sent Virginia officials scrambling on Friday — less than 24 hours after Gov. Ralph Northam outlined plans to expand vaccine eligibility.

The Washington Post reported Friday that there was no federal stockpile of additional vaccines, despite an announcement earlier this week by Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, who told states the Trump administration would begin distributing those doses immediately. Previously, the administration said it was holding back the vaccines to ensure a second dose for everyone who had already received a first shot.

Both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines — the only ones currently approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration — require a two-shot schedule.

Northam, along with multiple other Democratic governors, first asked HHS to begin releasing the reserve doses earlier this month. Virginia, like other states, has attributed its slower-than-expected vaccine rollout in part to the limited supply coming from the federal government.

HHS initially appeared unwilling to acquiesce to the request, according to reporting from Politico. But the administration’s Operation Warp Speed reversed that stance soon after President-elect Joe Biden announced he would begin releasing reserve doses to states after taking office.

Northam was one of many public officials to celebrate the arrival of additional vaccines. In his State of the Commonwealth address Wednesday, the governor announced that Virginia would begin vaccinating residents aged 65 and older — a direct response to Azar, who told states to expand their vaccination eligibility to speed up the pace of administration.

At a news briefing the next day, Northam announced that Virginians aged 65 and older, and those 65 and under with underlying medical conditions (including asthma, heart conditions and obesity, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), would be moved into Phase 1b of the state’s vaccination plan — the second stage of prioritization after health care providers and long-term care residents.

“This means about half of Virginia is now eligible to receive the vaccine,” he said Thursday. “That’s a major logistical effort, and it’s not going to happen overnight.”

But with Friday’s report, the timeline — and whether those expanded populations will still be eligible for Phase 1b — is even more unclear. Last week, the Virginia Department of Health announced that 11 local districts were moving into the second stage of the state’s campaign (two more — Pittsylvania-Danville and Southside — later this week). At his briefing, Northam said the rest of Virginia would move into Phase 1b by the end of January, and some local health districts have already announced plans for delivering vaccines to the expanded population.

The governor’s office couldn’t immediately confirm whether the reported lack of reserve vaccines would affect plans to expand 1b. “Honestly, right now we’re just trying to get clear answers from the federal government,” spokeswoman Alena Yarmosky wrote in an email on Friday.

But the Post reported that vaccine shipments, for all states, would likely stay flat if no additional doses had been held in stockpile. For Virginia, that’s roughly 110,000 doses of Pfizer and Moderna vaccine a week.

If that distribution remained the same, it would take around 39 weeks to vaccinate roughly half of all Virginians who fall into the expanded 1b category — which also includes teachers, first responders, and other essential workers. That’s a rough estimate, not accounting for new vaccines that may enter the supply chain and assuming that the state was also administering 110,000 doses a week.

At the same time, Virginia is still struggling to administer the vaccine doses it does have available. As of Friday, the state had only administered about 28 percent of the 943,400 total doses distributed to hospitals, local health departments and other medical facilities, according to date from the Virginia Department of Health’s vaccine reporting dashboard.

State health officials have said the dashboard is undercounting vaccines, partially due to lags or glitches in its electronic reporting system. But the CDC currently ranks Virginia 43 out of 50 states and Washington, D.C., when it comes to the number of doses administered per 100,000 people.

Dr. Danny Avula, the director of the Richmond-Henrico Health District who was recently appointed to head the state’s vaccine efforts, said officials were actively working to speed up the pace of vaccinations — including plans to establish large, free-standing vaccine clinics across the state.

But any mass immunization efforts will be hindered if vaccine supply remains low. Yarmosky said it was just one more frustration in trying to coordinate a COVID-19 response with the federal government.

“Once again, the Trump administration cannot seem to provide basic facts and truths,” she wrote Friday. “On Tuesday, governors were told explicitly that we would be provided additional doses — Virginia immediately pivoted and we moved quickly to expand eligibility and increase access.

“Now, the news media is reporting that the exact opposite may be true,” she said. “We’re frankly trying to gather as much information as possible right now — like every American, we need to understand what is going on, so we can plan accordingly. While astonishing, this is hardly surprising. What we’re seeing is fully in line with the dysfunction that has characterized the Trump administration’s entire response to COVID-19. President-elect Biden cannot be sworn in fast enough.”

Gov. Ralph Northam’s latest message to local school systems is to start thinking about reopening — and soon.

“In the short term, all of our school divisions need to be making plans for how to reopen,” he said at a news briefing on Thursday. “It’s not going to happen next week. But I want our schools to come from this starting point: how do we get schools open safely?”

Some division leaders said the new directive — accompanied by interim guidance from the Virginia Department of Health and Department of Education — represented a significant departure from the state’s earlier messaging on in-person instruction. Virginia’s initial guidance, released in July, emphasized that the final decision on reopening laid “squarely in the hands of local school boards” amid uncertain evidence on the role of children in COVID-19 transmission.

But a new letter from Virginia Superintendent of Public Instruction James Lane and state Health Commissioner Dr. Norman Oliver assured superintendents, school leadership and local health departments that “data increasingly suggest that school reopenings are unlikely to contribute significantly to community transmission when rates of community transmission are low and schools have infection prevention measures in place.”

The accompanying guidance includes a decision-making matrix that elevates individual mitigation measures over levels of community transmission. In a separate briefing later on Thursday, Lane said many divisions have been basing their reopening decisions primarily on top indicators from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which advise schools to consider community case rates and the percentage of positive tests over the last two weeks.

But Lane said heavier consideration should go to the ability of local schools to implement mitigation measures such as mask usage, sanitation and social distancing. Other main considerations include whether there’s evidence of spread within school buildings themselves, as well as the impact that school closures have had on the surrounding community.

“Even if they’re in the highest category of community transmission — and even more so for low and moderate — we recommend that they maximize in-person learning as much as possible,” Lane said.

The recommendations also call on schools to prioritize instruction for more vulnerable students, including young learners, students with disabilities and English language learners. And instead of making district-wide and long-term decisions — opting for remote learning over an entire quarter or semester, for example — officials say schools should have the flexibility to phase out decisions after a few weeks.

“If there’s low absenteeism, there’s no case transmission in buildings, your staff capacity isn’t strained — that school should have some in-person options,” Lane said. “If there’s an outbreak in a school, certainly think of closing for some time. But if there are no outbreaks and no transmission in the school community, we’re saying you should open as long as you can do mitigation strategies.”

However, as contact tracing resources have grown increasingly strained, most local health departments are prioritizing outbreaks and other cases that pose a significant public health risk. If multiple students or staff members test positive after close contact or sharing a potential exposure, health officials will likely investigate to determine if there was in-school transmission. But there’s little data on how most individual cases were contracted, and many local health officials have warned it’s become increasingly difficult to catch infected students or staff before they enter school buildings.

Reopening decisions have sparked fierce debate in local communities since Northam first announced a framework to bring students back to the classroom — four months after becoming one of the first governors in the country to close schools for the remainder of the spring semester.

Lane emphasized that the state never required schools to adopt remote instruction after releasing its first round of guidance in July. But those guidelines heavily emphasized CDC recommendations and asked schools to notify VDOE if they planned to deviate from the state’s framework.

By early September, the majority of local school divisions — 67 in total — had chosen to begin the fall semester remotely. As of Thursday, that number had dropped to 52. But Keith Perrigan, the superintendent for Bristol Public Schools in Southwest Virginia, said much of the ongoing caution stemmed from the original guidance, which took a more incremental approach to bringing students back to the classroom.

“This is a huge change,” he said. “The previous phase guidance, it was probably more of a recommendation to be cautious. And I think the new guidance is to try your very best to reopen. If you can mitigate appropriately, you ought to do what you can to get back in school.”

There’s still no mandate for school divisions to follow the state’s revised guidance. Lane said Thursday that the Virginia Constitution left the final decision with local school boards. But education officials also faced heavy criticism from some superintendents earlier this year for allowing local divisions to deviate from the original plan.

Some school systems have already made the decision to stay closed until at least the early spring — something Lane said he’d recommend reconsidering in light of the new guidance and the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines. But there are also continued debates even in districts that have prioritized in-person learning. In Chesterfield County, which announced plans to bring back elementary students next month, parents launched a petition calling on the school system to reverse the decision and keep schools mostly closed until teachers are fully vaccinated against COVID-19.

Both Northam and Lane faced significant questioning over the timing of the new guidelines, given that many schools have already announced reopening decisions for the spring. Virginia is also experiencing an ongoing surge of COVID-19 which some models suggest could continue until February. Rates of community transmission are consistently higher across Virginia than they’ve been at any other point during the pandemic. Daily new cases have risen in all five geographic regions throughout the early days of January, and hospitalizations are at an all-time high. Many health systems have voluntarily canceled elective surgeries or announced new surge plans to boost capacity for an ongoing influx of cases.

Lane said announcing the new guidance would give school districts the opportunity to prepare their plans in the coming weeks — even as Virginia contemplates longer-term changes such as year-round instruction to make up for learning loss during the pandemic. Northam also touted the arrival of COVID-19 vaccines as an important step in returning students safely to the classroom.

“While getting everyone vaccinated isn’t necessary to reopening schools, it will make it a lot easier,” he said. Eleven local health districts have begun vaccinating educators — or plan to start soon — after moving into Phase 1b of the state’s vaccine campaign.

But the timeline for the rest of the state remains unclear. As of Thursday, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ranked Virginia in the low bottom third of all U.S. states when it came to immunizing residents. The same day, VDH’s vaccine reporting dashboard showed that only about 25 percent of shots distributed across the state had made their way into patients’ arms.

And throughout November and December, some health districts advised in-person schools to again close their buildings, warning that the surging cases made it impossible for them to trace and investigate new infections. In Bristol, Perrigan said it was the first dose of vaccines — administered by the local health department earlier this week — that helped reassure teachers more than anything else.

“That’s what had the biggest impact — the availability of vaccines,” he said. “I think a lot of pressure was released once our staff was able to get that first round.”

Every Virginian vaccinated by early to mid-summer?

Many experts say it’s no longer likely. Gov. Ralph Northam has also readjusted earlier — and more optimistic — estimates from late November, when he spoke to NPR about the state’s COVID-19 vaccination plans.

“Phase three will be the general population and hopefully by, you know, early to midsummer have everybody in Virginia vaccinated,” he said at the time. But after a slower-than-expected rollout — both in Virginia and across the country — the administration has slightly revised its targets.

“The governor is still hopeful that everyone will have the opportunity to be vaccinated by mid-summer to fall,” spokeswoman Alena Yarmosky wrote in an email on Tuesday. The administration’s prospective timeline includes a few caveats, including the fact that children under 16 — or roughly 2 million Virginians — won’t be included in the overall total because a vaccine hasn’t yet been approved for them.

The goal also assumes that some of the state’s residents will decline the vaccine (“although we’re hopeful that is not a large percentage and will decrease further as this process continues,” Yarmosky wrote). And ultimately, it means Virginia will need to be administering at least 50,000 doses a day, which is contingent on new vaccines entering the market and an increase in federal shipments.

Yarmosky pointed to recent changes that have inspired optimism from state leaders across the country. One, announced Friday, is that the Biden administration plans to begin releasing available vaccines immediately, rather than holding back a second dose from shipments from Pfizer and Moderna.

But even with the change in administration, many experts say there needs to be a rapid shift in how COVID-19 vaccines are distributed and administered in order to meet a late-summer to fall target. Mark Capofari — who worked for Pfizer and spent more than a decade as the director of global logistics at Merck before becoming a full-time lecturer at Penn State — thinks vaccinations will be ongoing well into the third quarter of the year, which stretches from July to September.

Thomas Denny, the chief operating officer of the Duke Human Vaccine Institute, said it might take even longer for most of the public to get inoculated — possibly not until October or November.

“I got a bit more optimistic when it looked like vaccines were coming and we’d have a good number of doses to start out with,” he said. “But then in between late December and so far in January, just about every place has missed its mark with using the amount of doses they’ve gotten.”

“I’m now back to thinking that it’s not likely by the summer that we’ll achieve it,” he continued.

When the vaccine will be accessible to most Virginians has been a major question since the state received its first doses in mid-December. The Northam administration has tentatively predicted that Phase 1a — when vaccines are prioritized for health care providers and long-term care facilities — could conclude by the end of this month. But there’s already been some overlap with Phase 1b, which includes first responders, correction officers and teachers, followed by other frontline personnel such as grocery store clerks and mail carriers.

On Friday, the Virginia Department of Health announced that 11 local districts across the state were beginning Phase 1b early after vaccinating the majority of their medical workers and long-term care residents. Scheduling an appointment would “depend on the supply of vaccine available,” the department warned, and the phase is likely to take “several weeks to months” even with an early start.

But at a briefing last week, Northam also outlined prioritization plans for Phase 1c, the next step of the state’s vaccine campaign, which will include other essential workers in construction, transportation and utilities.

Providing a clear timeline for all the different subgroups can be complicated. VDH guidelines set a clear order for frontline workers in Phase 1b “because there is not sufficient supply at this time to vaccinate everyone at the same time.” But Virginians aged 75 and older are also included in Phase 1b, and it’s unclear where they fall in the order of prioritization.

Northam emphasized flexibility in his briefing last week, saying he’d rather see providers administer more doses than hew strictly to the state’s guidance. But given the state’s current pace, it’s unclear when the next two phases — which cover about half of the state’s roughly 8.5 million residents — will fully get underway.

As of Friday, the state had received 481,550 doses of vaccine and administered nearly 150,000, or about 30 percent of its total allocation. Health Commissioner Dr. Norman Oliver said Tuesday that the Virginia Department of Health’s vaccine reporting dashboard could be undercounting anywhere from 35,000 to 55,000, which would push the state’s total closer to 40 percent.

Bloomberg’s vaccine tracker ranks Virginia above nearby states including Pennsylvania, North Carolina and South Carolina, but below neighbors such as Maryland, Kentucky, Tennessee and West Virginia (which has an administration rate more than double the Old Dominion’s). And some experts, including Denny and Bruce Y. Lee, a professor at the CUNY Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy, say the haphazard rollout of vaccines across the country is mainly attributable to poor federal planning.

“When it comes right down to it, very few states have the wherewithal or the resources for the kind of coordination that’s required,” said Lee, who also works as the executive director of CUNY’s Public Health Computational and Operations Research. “That needed to come from the federal government.”

But Capofari said that state planning also played a major role, pointing to sometimes drastically different vaccination rates across the country. Funding makes a major difference, as does intensive planning and coordination between different agencies and providers.

He pointed to hospitals and local health departments — two settings where the state has routed a significant number of vaccines, though the Virginia Department of Health still can’t say which vaccines went where. If hospitals are going to play a role in vaccinating groups other than their own employees, Capofari said they need clear guidance on who to prioritize and how to reach them. And if hospitals are expected to transport any surplus doses to other settings, there needs to be clear communication and a plan of action, from which facility is responsible for transporting the vaccine to the equipment they’ll use to preserve the doses to when the delivery will be made.

“I think there’s still a lot of uncertainty still as to what the plans are and even where to do the inoculations and how to go about it,” he said.

Brandon

Gov. Ralph Northam acknowledged Wednesday that Virginia needs to speed up the pace of its COVID-19 vaccinations, announcing a “you use it or you lose it policy” prodding health care providers to administer the shots to more residents.

“I want you to empty those freezers and get shots in arms,” he said. “When you have vials, give out shots until they’re gone. No one wants to see any supplies sitting unused.”

The governor’s news briefing — his first in nearly a month — came as Virginia experiences its worst COVID-19 caseload than at any other point in the pandemic. The statewide percent positivity rate rose to nearly 17 percent on Wednesday, and Northam pointed out that daily case numbers are currently four times higher than they were in the spring — an average of more than 4,700 new infections every day.

At the same time, Virginia has been grappling with a sluggish rollout of a vaccine described by the governor as “the most powerful tool — the one that’s going to literally change things.” Northam has not announced new restrictions since early December, but has described COVID-19 vaccines as a ray of hope in the ongoing pandemic.

Many states have struggled with administering the shots after the federal government shipped out early doses in mid-December. But until recently, Virginia ranked 46th in the country when it came to the percentage of vaccines administered among states, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported. The state’s rating has improved, but thousands of vaccines still have yet to make their way into the arms of Virginians.

State health officials also elaborated on reporting issues that have prevented administered doses from appearing on the Virginia Department of Health’s vaccine reporting dashboard. Health Commissioner Dr. Norman Oliver said Wednesday that the department updated its internal immunization reporting system in anticipation of the COVID-19 vaccine, but that some providers, as a result, have struggled to enter data in a timely manner. There have also been technical glitches that have prevented some health systems’ vaccines from hitting the dashboard.

Northam’s spokeswoman, Alena Yarmosky, said that in some cases, providers are reporting vaccinations but the data is appearing inaccurately in the state’s system, requiring VDH employees to go back and verify the numbers. As a result of all the problems, Oliver said that the state’s totals could be undercounting anywhere from 35,000 to 55,000 doses.

“We’re actually doing better than we appear,” he said after the briefing. But even if 55,000 was added to the state’s total number of administered vaccines, it would mean that health providers have given out around 171,247 of the 481,550 doses delivered to the state — around 35 percent.

To address the slow rollout, Northam announced several steps the administration plans to take over the next several weeks.

New goals for administering the vaccine

Northam outlined new goals for giving out the vaccine as one of the first steps in his plan to ramp up administration. Currently, he said the state receives roughly 110,000 doses of Pfizer and Moderna vaccine a week, which equates to an immediate goal of delivering 14,000 shots a day to fully use up that supply.

On Wednesday, VDH reported that 2,695 doses had been administered in the last 24 hours. That daily increase has been as high as 12,000 in recent days, but Yarmosky said the large jump was the result of backlogged data. Current reporting delays make it difficult for the department to assess daily progress, which is why resolving those issues is an instrumental part of achieving the governor’s goal, she added.

Longer-term, Northam said he’d like to build up to 25,000 daily doses — a number that also depends on federal officials ramping up shipments to states. Oliver later said the goal was achievable if President-elect Joe Biden delivered on his promise to distribute 100 million shots within his first 100 days in office. Yarmosky also said the state’s daily goal would increase with the greater supply.

‘Lose it or lose it’

Northam’s newly announced policy is directed at health systems, local health departments and other clinical settings that receive doses of the vaccine. The governor said with the next shipment of Pfizer and Moderna doses, VDH would expand its reporting so Virginians can see where vaccines are delivered and how quickly they’re being used.

“Virginians, you deserve this transparency,” he said. State officials will also monitor usage, and sites that don’t fully use their allocated doses could face reduced shipments going forward.

“Don’t save anything,” Northam said. “You’re going to get every dose you need because more is coming. But if you’re not using what you receive, you must be getting too much.”

A plan for next phases

The governor also unveiled priority groups for Phase 1b and 1c,  the next stages in the state’s vaccination campaign. According to Yarmosky, the current phase — 1a, which includes medical workers and long-term care facilities — should be finished by late January. VDH spokeswoman Erin Beard told the Mercury yesterday that moving onto later phases is based on whether “vaccine supply significantly increases” and “if vaccine demand is less than supply.”

Phase 1b will include essential and frontline workers — “people who work in jobs that keep society functioning,” Northam said. That includes roughly 285,000 teachers and childcare providers, along with first responders, mail carriers, corrections officers and grocery store workers. Essential workers in manufacturing and food production will also be included, as will public transit employees.

All adults aged 75 or older will also be included in phase 1b.

Phase 1c will cover essential workers in construction, transportation, and food service, such as restaurant servers, as well as adults aged 65 or older and all Virginians between 16 and 65 with high-risk medical conditions. The two groups — phase 1b and 1c — cover about half of the state’s roughly 8.5 million residents, Northam said, before the vaccine will move to the general public.

But the logistics of moving onto different phases — and the details of how state officials will ensure quicker innoculation — are largely unclear. Northam appointed Dr. Danny Avula, the director of the Richmond-Henrico Health Department, to oversee and coordinate statewide vaccination efforts, saying more details would become available in the coming weeks.

But as the Mercury has reported, some large health systems are vaccinating non-clinical employees who have worked from home since the start of the pandemic — even as some community providers struggle to book appointments with their local health departments.

Northam emphasized Wednesday that distribution sites should err on the side of vaccinating Virginians rather than holding doses based on prioritization. But Oliver also said that sites should follow the state’s guidance whenever possible “because that’s been well thought through” (he later added that VDH advised against giving out doses to Virginians who aren’t frontline workers, including anyone who can work from home).

What’s not clear is how Virginians in phase 1b and 1c will be notified that they’re eligible for the vaccine and when it becomes available. It’s also still unclear how health systems will manage excess doses. Northam said his administration hasn’t heard of vaccines being wasted, but Oliver later said anecdotal data suggests that only 60 percent of EMS workers and nurses have opted for vaccination.

Whether health systems will assist in vaccinating other priority groups remains to be seen. Oliver said it would require close collaboration with local health departments so that hospitals could redistribute unused doses to other settings.

“Maybe they vaccinate, maybe they just provide the supplies,” he said. “And we would shift the allocations if they weren’t using them.”

Virginia State Sen. A. Benton “Ben” Chafin Jr., R-Russell, has died of COVID-19, the Senate Republican leadership announced Friday evening.

“Tonight, as the Senate of Virginia comes to grips with this tremendous and untimely loss caused by COVID-19, our sympathy and prayers are with Ben’s wife, Lora Lee, their children and grandchildren, and Ben’s mother and his sister, Justice Teresa Chafin,” Senate Republican Leader Tommy Norment, R-James City, said in a statement.

Chafin, 60, was born in Abingdon and was briefly a member of the House of Delegates before winning a special election to the Senate in 2014. He is the first Virginia lawmaker to die from the virus, though several have had bouts with COVID-19, as has Gov. Ralph Northam and his wife, Pam.

“Ben was deeply and wholeheartedly committed to the commonwealth, and especially to the people of Southwest Virginia. A community leader in Russell, Ben rose to prominence in the fields of law, banking and agriculture long before his neighbors elected him to the General Assembly,” Norment said.

“First as delegate and then senator, Ben relentlessly promoted and fought for the interests and values of Southwest. He put the interests of those he was entrusted to serve first, cherishing the people of the region he proudly called ‘home.’”

Northam, a Democrat and former state senator who also presided over the chamber as lieutenant governor, said Southwest Virginia had “lost a strong advocate — and we have all lost a good man.”

“I knew Ben as a lawmaker, an attorney, a banker, and a farmer raising beef cattle in Moccasin Valley, working the land just as generations of his family had done before him. He loved the outdoors, and he loved serving people even more. He pushed hard to bring jobs and investment to his district, and I will always be grateful for his courageous vote to expand health care for people who need it,” Northam said, referring to Chafin’s vote to expand Medicaid in 2018. Northam has ordered the state flag to be lowered to half-staff.

“Pam and I are praying for Lora and their children. … This is sad news to begin a new year with the loss of a kind and gracious man. May we all recommit to taking extra steps to care for one another,” Northam said.

The Roanoke Times reported that Chafin had tested positive for the virus in December but that his family kept the diagnosis private for weeks.

Democratic House Speaker Eileen Filler-Corn, D-Fairfax, said she was “deeply saddened” by Chafin’s death, which comes less than two weeks before the General Assembly is scheduled to convene on Jan. 13.

“I respected his commitment to the people of the 38th senatorial district and his strong advocacy on their behalf,” she said.

Democratic Senate Majority Leader Dick Saslaw, D-Fairfax, said Chafin “epitomized the Virginia gentleman — he was compassionate, thoughtful and cared deeply for his district and all Virginians. We will miss him dearly.”

Americans can be a selfish lot. Not everybody, of course. But too many people couldn’t care less about taking the necessary steps to keep deaths and infections from COVID-19 at bay.

It’s not that hard: Stay at home as much as possible. Wear a mask out in public and in buildings. Wash your hands. Avoid situations where you can’t stay at least 6 feet apart. Treat workers with respect and deference who must come into contact with consumers. Limit the number of people at social gatherings.

Folks, none of these are Herculean tasks. We’re not being asked to climb mountains, mine for ore or donate a kidney just to survive.

Yet several months into this raging pandemic, the “me-first” mentality is readily apparent, in the commonwealth and elsewhere:

• The Virginia Department of Health issued a news release last week noting COVID-19 cases were surging in Norton city and Lee, Scott and Wise counties. “Keep in mind that your behavior can help protect yourself and others — or put you and them at increased risk,” said Dr. Sue Cantrell, a director of health districts in the area. (I tried to interview Cantrell about whether resistance to mask-wearing contributed to the numbers, but I couldn’t reach her.)

• A mid-October wedding at Wintergreen Resort forced several employees to quarantine because of possible exposure to COVID-19, an official said. Some staffers tested positive. Weddings are special, but shouldn’t couples limit the number of guests because of the times we’re in? Even then, you don’t know if all the well-wishers had recent tests confirming they were free of the virus.

• Lynchburg General Hospital’s acute care facilities were “strained,” a top official said, because of an influx of coronavirus patients last week.

• Despite new restrictions imposed by Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker prohibiting indoor dining in specific communities, a throng of customers showed up and packed a restaurant in defiance of the guidelines, the Chicago Tribune reported. The restaurant’s social media post said it was opening “out of survival and to help our staff pay their bills.” Yet Pritzker this week warned “there seems to be a COVID storm coming.”

The United States has proved the days of exceptionalism are over — unless you’re talking about leading everybody else with more than 226,000 deaths. By mid-October, the United States had the highest numbers of COVID-19 infections and deaths, and officials said we’ve entered a third peak of cases in many states.

We don’t have a vaccine. So why is it so hard for Americans to do what medical experts advise to fight this thing?

University professors I interviewed and scholarly articles suggested several reasons: Partisanship, since many Republicans followed President Donald Trump’s lead in downplaying or even denying the coronavirus’ existence, and they resisted wearing masks. A rugged individualism — baked into the nation’s founding — over working for the common good. And pandemic fatigue, even as there’s no end in sight to the carnage.

“We are a country that values individualism, materialism and wealth over the well-being of our neighbors,” Tim Goler, assistant professor of sociology and urban affairs at Norfolk State University, told me. He’s one of the researchers overseeing a pandemic study of older adults.

Goler added that people are fed up with being at home, especially if they haven’t been directly affected by deaths or illnesses: “They’re willing to sacrifice people dying.” You saw indications of this even earlier this year, when protesters demanded states to reopen their economies — even as spikes of infections continued.

“The pandemic has exposed the extent to which we do not live in a ‘United States of America,’ ” said Ernestine Duncan, a psychology professor at NSU. She noted people in other nations have accepted strong restrictions on movements and behavior, and they’re faring better than the U.S.

Clearly, we’re an individualistic society, Duncan noted.

It made me wonder about the last time our sprawling, populous country really sacrificed as a whole for the common good. Historians might point to World War II, in which food, gasoline and clothes were rationed.

Officials and residents collected scrap metal and rubber for the war effort. Women entered defense plants to work because so many men had joined the military and people grew “Victory Gardens” in large numbers to supplement their meals.

The circumstances, though, aren’t totally analogous. Back then, Americans were forced into rationing because of governmental mandates; that hasn’t always been the case this time. Trump has hesitated to restrict the movements and actions of citizens in spite of the way the coronavirus is transmitted.

In the 21^st century, our rugged, go-it-alone mentality has horrific consequences. We shouldn’t be surprised by the ever-rising COVID-19 death toll if we continue to be more concerned about individual comfort rather than our collective safety.

It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy — an awful one.

Virginia Health Officials are warning about small gatherings. It’s part of the concern over rising numbers in southwest Virginia but the message goes to the entire state as we head into the holidays.

“Coming together as an extended family as if you are in one household does present risk,” said Dr. Daniel Carey, Virginia Secretary of Health and Human Resources.

During a COVID-19 briefing Wednesday, Governor Ralph Northam said those gatherings are the reason behind a percent positivity climb from 5% to 8% in southwest Virginia.

“I know that many people are tired of COVID restrictions. We are all tired of not having social get togethers, not going to see sports or shows, not having the regular interactions that we count on in our lives,” said Northam.

To understand the mind of a teacher, those of us who do other things for a living must attempt some mental gymnastics.

Let’s imagine a professional passion so acute that when the coronavirus shuttered classrooms, they pivoted with little warning or rehearsal to digitally link dozens of children from home and continue daily instruction remotely.

Close your eyes and comprehend a devotion to students so strong that you spend your personal money to supplement classroom supplies as eclectic as sanitizing wipes and Elmer’s glue, crepe paper and whiteboard markers.

Now, as days start shortening and summer bends toward autumn and a new academic calendar, imagine balancing your innate yearning for the classroom with a well-reasoned fear of a monstrously contagious, potentially deadly virus that medicine still can’t control and science doesn’t fully understand.

Finally, overlay that against the backdrop of political conflict and chaos that multiplies by the day.

The Virginia Department of Corrections says it’s down to 22 active cases of COVID-19 among inmates in the 40 prisons it operates around the state.

Gov. Ralph Northam’s secretary of public safety, Brian Moran, touted the figures Friday, which include six hospitalized prisoners and 16 still being held at various correctional facilities. He emphasized the latter number in a presentation to lawmakers.

“We have 16, let me repeat, 16 active cases in all of our correctional facilities,” he said during a joint meeting of the Senate’s judiciary and social services committees. “That’s out of 28,000 inmates, 40 correctional facilities. Sixteen — one six — active cases.”

Virginia is refusing to release information on COVID-19 outbreaks at poultry processing plants on the grounds of privacy concerns, despite a June decision to provide such data for long-term care facilities.

In response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the Mercury in June after Gov. Ralph Northam’s administration began releasing facility-specific data for nursing homes, the Virginia Department of Health said it would not provide the same information for poultry processing plants “in order to ensure that VDH is able to preserve the anonymity of individuals whose medical records have been examined during the investigation of COVID-19.”

“VDH is considering how to make the information you have requested available at the health district and/or regional level,” wrote VDH Deputy Commissioner for Governmental and Regulatory Affairs Joseph Hilbert in an email.

Neither a followup request to Hilbert nor an inquiry to the governor’s office about the justification for releasing such information for nursing homes but not poultry plants were answered.

Democrats agree their ticket can’t be three white guys and it shouldn’t be overweighted to the party’s anchor, Northern Virginia. The backlash to Donald Trump, the fury over George Floyd and the aftershocks of Ralph Northam’s blackface moment — all factors in the ballooning field — demand a ticket that looks like the New Virginia.

If only Democrats, mindful of demographic and geographic balance, could assemble it the old-fashioned way, the un-democratic way in which the whims of grandees carried disproportionate weight. This worked when the party was a white segregationist cabal and, because of laws limiting access to the polls, only a sliver of eligible population voted.

Modern Democrats acknowledge that synching up slates of candidates ahead of the June primary is perilous and would fuel resentments that would weaken the party. That doesn’t mean they don’t consider the possibility — as an abstract exercise. Put another way: Democrats can dream.

Gov. Ralph Northam’s latest message to local school systems is to start thinking about reopening — and soon.

“In the short term, all of our school divisions need to be making plans for how to reopen,” he said at a news briefing on Thursday. “It’s not going to happen next week. But I want our schools to come from this starting point: how do we get schools open safely?”

Some division leaders said the new directive — accompanied by interim guidance from the Virginia Department of Health and Department of Education — represented a significant departure from the state’s earlier messaging on in-person instruction. Virginia’s initial guidance, released in July, emphasized that the final decision on reopening laid “squarely in the hands of local school boards” amid uncertain evidence on the role of children in COVID-19 transmission.

But a new letter from Virginia Superintendent of Public Instruction James Lane and state Health Commissioner Dr. Norman Oliver assured superintendents, school leadership and local health departments that “data increasingly suggest that school reopenings are unlikely to contribute significantly to community transmission when rates of community transmission are low and schools have infection prevention measures in place.”

The accompanying guidance includes a decision-making matrix that elevates individual mitigation measures over levels of community transmission. In a separate briefing later on Thursday, Lane said many divisions have been basing their reopening decisions primarily on top indicators from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which advise schools to consider community case rates and the percentage of positive tests over the last two weeks.

But Lane said heavier consideration should go to the ability of local schools to implement mitigation measures such as mask usage, sanitation and social distancing. Other main considerations include whether there’s evidence of spread within school buildings themselves, as well as the impact that school closures have had on the surrounding community.

“Even if they’re in the highest category of community transmission — and even more so for low and moderate — we recommend that they maximize in-person learning as much as possible,” Lane said.

The recommendations also call on schools to prioritize instruction for more vulnerable students, including young learners, students with disabilities and English language learners. And instead of making district-wide and long-term decisions — opting for remote learning over an entire quarter or semester, for example — officials say schools should have the flexibility to phase out decisions after a few weeks.

“If there’s low absenteeism, there’s no case transmission in buildings, your staff capacity isn’t strained — that school should have some in-person options,” Lane said. “If there’s an outbreak in a school, certainly think of closing for some time. But if there are no outbreaks and no transmission in the school community, we’re saying you should open as long as you can do mitigation strategies.”

However, as contact tracing resources have grown increasingly strained, most local health departments are prioritizing outbreaks and other cases that pose a significant public health risk. If multiple students or staff members test positive after close contact or sharing a potential exposure, health officials will likely investigate to determine if there was in-school transmission. But there’s little data on how most individual cases were contracted, and many local health officials have warned it’s become increasingly difficult to catch infected students or staff before they enter school buildings.

Reopening decisions have sparked fierce debate in local communities since Northam first announced a framework to bring students back to the classroom — four months after becoming one of the first governors in the country to close schools for the remainder of the spring semester.

Lane emphasized that the state never required schools to adopt remote instruction after releasing its first round of guidance in July. But those guidelines heavily emphasized CDC recommendations and asked schools to notify VDOE if they planned to deviate from the state’s framework.

By early September, the majority of local school divisions — 67 in total — had chosen to begin the fall semester remotely. As of Thursday, that number had dropped to 52. But Keith Perrigan, the superintendent for Bristol Public Schools in Southwest Virginia, said much of the ongoing caution stemmed from the original guidance, which took a more incremental approach to bringing students back to the classroom.

“This is a huge change,” he said. “The previous phase guidance, it was probably more of a recommendation to be cautious. And I think the new guidance is to try your very best to reopen. If you can mitigate appropriately, you ought to do what you can to get back in school.”

There’s still no mandate for school divisions to follow the state’s revised guidance. Lane said Thursday that the Virginia Constitution left the final decision with local school boards. But education officials also faced heavy criticism from some superintendents earlier this year for allowing local divisions to deviate from the original plan.

Some school systems have already made the decision to stay closed until at least the early spring — something Lane said he’d recommend reconsidering in light of the new guidance and the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines. But there are also continued debates even in districts that have prioritized in-person learning. In Chesterfield County, which announced plans to bring back elementary students next month, parents launched a petition calling on the school system to reverse the decision and keep schools mostly closed until teachers are fully vaccinated against COVID-19.

Both Northam and Lane faced significant questioning over the timing of the new guidelines, given that many schools have already announced reopening decisions for the spring. Virginia is also experiencing an ongoing surge of COVID-19 which some models suggest could continue until February. Rates of community transmission are consistently higher across Virginia than they’ve been at any other point during the pandemic. Daily new cases have risen in all five geographic regions throughout the early days of January, and hospitalizations are at an all-time high. Many health systems have voluntarily canceled elective surgeries or announced new surge plans to boost capacity for an ongoing influx of cases.

Lane said announcing the new guidance would give school districts the opportunity to prepare their plans in the coming weeks — even as Virginia contemplates longer-term changes such as year-round instruction to make up for learning loss during the pandemic. Northam also touted the arrival of COVID-19 vaccines as an important step in returning students safely to the classroom.

“While getting everyone vaccinated isn’t necessary to reopening schools, it will make it a lot easier,” he said. Eleven local health districts have begun vaccinating educators — or plan to start soon — after moving into Phase 1b of the state’s vaccine campaign.

But the timeline for the rest of the state remains unclear. As of Thursday, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ranked Virginia in the low bottom third of all U.S. states when it came to immunizing residents. The same day, VDH’s vaccine reporting dashboard showed that only about 25 percent of shots distributed across the state had made their way into patients’ arms.

And throughout November and December, some health districts advised in-person schools to again close their buildings, warning that the surging cases made it impossible for them to trace and investigate new infections. In Bristol, Perrigan said it was the first dose of vaccines — administered by the local health department earlier this week — that helped reassure teachers more than anything else.

“That’s what had the biggest impact — the availability of vaccines,” he said. “I think a lot of pressure was released once our staff was able to get that first round.”

While Virginia Democrats’ big environmental push of 2020 was the Virginia Clean Economy Act, a sweeping omnibus measure designed to eliminate carbon emissions from the state’s power grid by 2050, during the 2021 session they’re setting their sights on a tougher and more diffuse source of carbon: transportation.

According to 2017 figures from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, almost half of Virginia’s carbon emissions — 48 percent — come from transportation. Electric power, by contrast, accounts for almost a third, at 29 percent.

But while power grid emissions come largely from a few dozen generating plants fueled by coal, gas and oil, transportation emissions come from literally millions of sources. More than 8.4 million vehicles are registered in the commonwealth, according to 2020 data from the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles. The vast majority of those are powered by gasoline-fueled internal combustion engines, with electric vehicles numbering just shy of 150,000, most of them hybrids.

“The transportation sector is where we can have the most gains now in terms of getting carbon out of the atmosphere,” said Del. David Reid, D-Loudoun, who is sponsoring two bills that aim to encourage electric vehicle use.

Replacing Virginians’ gas-powered vehicles with electric ones will be a daunting lift. Unlike many other states, Virginia currently has no incentives in place for electric vehicle adoption, and price tags for proposals to both incentivize such purchases and build up the infrastructure to support their expansion are large. One recent study conducted by a working group through the Department of Mines, Minerals and Energy found that a proposed rebate program would require $43 million in funding to cover rebates for approximately 13,000 electric vehicles.

Still, many Democrats, who control the legislature and the governor’s office, argue that with climate change accelerating and increased flooding due to sea level rise in the low-lying Hampton Roads region, action is needed.

“We’re now in the position where the public, I believe, is driving the legislators to say, number one, we’ve got to do something about the environment, but number two, there’s options now that we’ve never had before” said Del. Ken Plum, D-Fairfax, during a virtual town hall about electric vehicles this December. “We need to get on board.”

Looking to California — and Maryland — for new emissions standards

Among environmentalists, this session’s top-line legislation is a bill being carried by Del. Lamont Bagby, D-Henrico, that would allow the State Air Pollution Control Board to adopt low-emission and zero-emission vehicle standards set by California beginning no earlier than 2023 and no later than 2025.

The Clean Air Act of 1970, the nation’s preeminent air quality law, prohibits any state from setting its own emissions standards for new vehicles but provides a waiver of that restriction for California, which already had standards on its books at the time of the law’s passage and was suffering from widespread smog and other pollution. Other states that wish to set emissions standards more stringent than federal ones are allowed to adopt California’s — a road taken by 15 jurisdictions, including Maryland, Delaware and Washington, D.C. (Three other states are in the process of considering adoption.)

Bagby’s legislation, House Bill 1965, would put Virginia on a path toward adopting not only these low-emission vehicle, or LEV, standards but zero-emission vehicle, or ZEV, standards mandating that a certain percentage of all cars sold by manufacturers in Virginia be electric. Under the Clean Air Act, neither can go into effect for at least two years after approval by the federal government.

Advocates say the measures, collectively known as the Advanced Clean Cars Program, are essential for carbon reduction goals.

“It’s really important that we pass this bill this year, because once the regulation is finalized, there’s a mandatory two-year wait before manufacturers need to comply,” said Lena Lewis, energy and climate policy manager for the Nature Conservancy, which along with groups like the Southern Environmental Law Center, Sierra Club Virginia and the Virginia Conservation Network is supporting the bill. “Given the urgency and the pace at which climate change is happening, we need to react to it with the seriousness which this problem demands.”

Auto dealers, though, have balked. The Virginia Automobile Dealers Association opposed a similar measure in 2020 and this December sent a letter to the chairs of the House and Senate Agriculture, Conservation and Natural Resources Committees asking that a stakeholder group be convened to study electric vehicle deployment and that consideration of a “comprehensive plan to decrease vehicle emissions” be brought forward in 2022.

“Virginia dealers support the adoption of EVs. They have adapted to changes in their industry for generations, and electric vehicles represent just the latest in a long line of advancements,” said Don Hall, president and CEO of the association, in an email. But he said the zero-emission vehicle standard would require dealers to carry “vehicles that may be too expensive or not in demand by consumers” on their lot.

“Virginia should only consider ZEV mandates in conjunction with the necessary commitment of resources to assure successful implementation of the regulations without unfair impact on any party, including dealers,” he said.

In its letter to the committee chairs, VADA emphasized the need for more infrastructure investment prior to the creation of any new mandate.

“If Virginia wants to emulate California, then the Commonwealth must also match California’s investment,” the association wrote.

Bagby called the request to delay action until 2022 “unfortunate.”

“We have acknowledged that this can’t start immediately and we can’t expect those cars to show up on the lots overnight,” he said. But, he added, the Advanced Clean Car standards would put “a timeline in place,” with an expected start of 2025.

“It’s time to get the wheels in motion,” he said.

Feeding supply, fueling demand

While Hall said electric vehicles “are still far outpaced by demand and registrations for gas-powered vehicles in Virginia,” advocates say the Advanced Clean Cars Program could increase adoption by increasing the commonwealth’s supply of electric vehicles.

If adopted, the ZEV standard would require roughly 8 percent of all vehicles manufacturers sold statewide to be electric by 2025.

The demand is there, say these advocates. One survey conducted by pro-electric vehicle group Generation180 found that while over half of Virginians surveyed were likely to consider an electric vehicle for their next car, inventory was 44 to 54 percent lower in Virginia cities than in comparable Maryland cities, with certain popular models seven to 10 times more available in the latter. Many respondents reported having to travel to Maryland to buy an electric car.

Availability isn’t the only barrier to electric vehicle adoption, however. While costs have dropped in recent years — experts believe they’ll reach price parity with gas-powered vehicles by 2025, or even sooner — the technology remains more expensive than traditional models.

A bill put forward by Reid aims to offset that price premium through a two-tiered rebate program that would offer buyers or lessees of electric vehicles rebates of up to $2,500 or $4,500, depending on their income. Dealers would also receive a $50 incentive payment for each car they sold.

The program design hews closely to that put forward by the working group that estimated it would cost $43 million, although Reid said his bill proposes a more scaled-down version. That group, which included not only environmental organizations but auto dealers and state agencies, determined such a program was “feasible and similar to programs that currently operate in other states.”

“We wanted to make it so it’s as simple as possible for the salesperson to use, because we wanted to remove all the barriers or impediments that are either perceived or actual,” said Reid.

Another major barrier, infrastructure, will also be on lawmakers’ agenda in a bill from Sen. Jennifer Boysko, D-Fairfax, that would require an analysis of electric vehicle charging infrastructure as part of the state’s energy plan. Currently, as the Automobile Dealers Association pointed out in their December letter, Virginia only has about 2,000 charging stations, a fraction of those found in California. Many of those are clustered in the state’s more populous regions and become more sparse in rural areas.

“It’s going to be very difficult for you to find a great charging station in Bath County,” admitted Del. Sam Rasoul, D-Roanoke, during the December electric vehicle town hall.

A study of readiness conducted by the Virginia Department of Transportation and recently released to lawmakers “found that we in Virginia, like pretty much everywhere else in the country, are not ready for mass deployment of vehicles,” said Boysko.

“We have a long way to go to get to full capacity and this will get us on track for that,” she said.

The cost conundrum

The biggest question mark in the electric vehicle debate remains cost.

Charging stations offer opportunity for businesses, and a special docket to consider electric vehicles established by the State Corporation Commission this summer revealed an appetite for growth. Electric vehicle proponents also emphasize the job creation potential the market poses, with factories like the Volvo plant in Dublin planning to begin manufacturing new models, while businesses have begun to tout the lifetime savings costs they expect from electrification.

But other efforts, like rebate programs, and the desire to ensure that infrastructure is developed equitably, including in rural areas that might not attract much competition, are likely to require deep pockets — complicated by the hit on the global economy as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

As far as the $43 million working group estimate for the rebate program, Reid said that “in today’s environment, I don’t think that money is available.”

“It may be we have to put the program in place this year and then find funding,” he said. “We’re not sure right now how much money is going to come back to the state budget.”

The DMME working group in its final report put forward a range of funding options, including transportation-related taxes and fees, congestion pricing and the highway usage fee.

One potential revenue source is the Transportation and Climate Initiative, a cap-and-invest market similar to the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative that would require fuel suppliers to purchase emissions allowances in an auction and then redistribute the proceeds to participating states for reinvestment in clean transportation.

Virginia, however, has hesitated to join TCI. While Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island formally committed to the program this December, Virginia and seven other states merely pledged their ongoing collaboration in efforts to develop the new initiative. At the time, Alena Yarmosky, a spokesperson for Gov. Ralph Northam’s office, said Northam hadn’t ruled out the possibility of full commitment in the future. Clean energy advocates expect the program to come before the General Assembly in 2022, but any such proposal is likely to face fierce resistance from some Republicans and industry groups.

Related bills

Related proposals before the General Assembly this session include:

• House Bill 2118 from Del. Mark Keam, D-Fairfax, which would create the Electric Vehicle Grant Program to issue competitive grants to school boards to replace diesel school buses with electric ones by 2031, put in place charging infrastructure for the buses and set up educational and workforce development programs to encourage industry growth. The program would be funded with a tax on dyed diesel fuel, a type of diesel identified for nonroad use.
• House Joint Resolution 542 from Del. Delores McQuinn, D-Richmond, to request the Department of Rail and Public Transportation to study transit equity and modernization. Most plans for reducing transportation emissions rely on a dual strategy of converting gas-powered vehicles to electric ones while also reducing the number of vehicle miles traveled through more robust public transit infrastructure.

Retail sales of recreational marijuana would begin in Virginia on Jan. 1, 2023, under legislation authored by Gov. Ralph Northam’s administration, which in addition to ending the state’s prohibition on the drug would expunge many past criminal convictions and create a state fund to help people arrested for marijuana crimes start legal businesses.

Northam came out in favor of legalization late last year and his bill, first made public Wednesday, represents a starting point for what’s expected to be a long debate during the legislative session that begins this week.

“Marijuana prohibition has historically been based in discrimination and the impact of criminalization laws have disproportionately harmed minorities in low income communities as a result,” said Sen. Louise Lucas, D-Portsmouth, who is carrying the legislation in the Senate with Sen. Adam Ebbin, D-Alexandria. “We’re focused on undoing those harms.”

Timeline

When Northam announced his support for legalization, he said he did not plan to rush the process, citing the experience of regulators in other states. True to his word, his legislation lays out a two-year timetable in which officials would begin drafting regulations and issuing licenses to marijuana businesses before retail sales would begin in 2023.

“We’ve done the research and we can do this the right way,” he said during his State of the Commonwealth address Wednesday night.

Until then, most of the state’s current laws governing the drug would remain in place and the drug, while currently decriminalized, would remain illegal and subject to existing criminal and civil penalties.

The decision is likely to disappoint criminal justice advocates, who have argued for an immediate end to the state’s prohibition, enforcement of which has disproportionately targeted Black Virginians.

Likewise, operators of Virginia’s tightly-controlled medical cannabis dispensaries, have been lobbying for permission to begin recreational sales this year to serve as a stop gap while regulators establish rules and begin a broader licensing process.

However, legislative analysts who studied the issue last year recommended against that approach, arguing early access to the retail market would give medical producers an unfair competitive advantage and, in any case, would be unlikely to meet anticipated demand for the drug.

Taxes and oversight

Northam proposes handing regulatory control of the new marketplace to the Virginia Alcoholic Beverage Control Authority, which would be renamed the Virginia Alcoholic Beverage and Cannabis Control Authority.

But unlike the state’s monopoly on the sales of liquor, in which sales are restricted to state-run retail stores, the authority’s role in the marijuana industry would be limited to developing and enforcing regulations and licensing producers, processers and retailers.

Northam proposed a 21 percent tax rate on retail sales, which, combined with the existing state sales tax and optional three-percent local tax would bring the total potential levy to nearly 30 percent, which the state’s Joint Legislative and Audit Review Commission (JLARC) estimates would bring in $37 million in new tax revenue the first-year sales are legalized, rising to an estimated $183 million in year five.

JLARC found 30 percent is on the high-end of tax rates assessed in other legal states, comparable to Colorado and Illinois but still less than the 36 percent and 47 percent charged in California and Washington, respectively.

The revenue would be divided four ways, with 40 percent going to pre-K programs for low-income families, 30 percent going to social equity programs, 25 percent going to substance abuse prevention and treatment programs and five percent going to public health programs.

The decision to charge the state’s alcohol control authority with overseeing the new marketplace was not a given. JLARC said the upside of such an approach is faster implementation of new regulations with a lower operating costs. The commission said the downside is that creating a new, dedicated state agency would have more flexibility and a greater focus on equity programs lawmakers have emphasized as they pursue legalization.

The liquor authority would be advised by a new Cannabis Control Advisory Board, which would be tasked with making recommendations as regulations are developed governing cultivation, security, quality testing, advertising and other restrictions and rules.

Equity

Northam proposes an array of equity programs aimed at making sure Black residents, who bore the brunt of criminal enforcement under prohibition but have struggled to gain a foothold in other states’ legal marketplaces, have an opportunity to profit from the drug’s legalization in Virginia.

“It’s important that people who have been damaged by the war on marijuana not be denied opportunity,” said Ebbin, the bill’s co-patron in the Senate.

The legislation would grant social equity licenses for businesses that are owned by people who were arrested or convicted of a marijuana offense or are the family member of someone who was, people who have lived for at least three years in a place the state determines was disproportionately policed for marijuana crimes or is determined to be economically depressed. Alternatively, businesses that aren’t owned by people who meet that criteria could still be eligible if they employ at least 10 full time employees who do.

The proposed qualifications were recommended by JLARC as an alternative to race-based criteria, which the commission said is generally only allowed by courts in instances where there is already a documented history of race-based exclusion.

Social equity licensees would be given a six-month head start to apply for licenses to operate marijuana businesses as well as technical support from the state and, potentially, lower application fees.

The legislation also proposes offering state-financed, low-interest business loans to help applicants start their businesses — an effort to address the difficulty of raising capital in an industry where most banks are still either unable or unwilling to issue loans.

The loan program would be financed by a new Cannabis Equity Reinvestment Fund, to which Northam proposes dedicating 30 percent of new tax revenue from marijuana sales.

The new fund would be controlled by a new board, the Cannabis Equity Reinvestment Board, which would more broadly be tasked with financing initiatives aimed at “making whole again families and communities historically and disproportionately targeted and affected by drug enforcement.” The proposed legislation specifically references scholarships, grants and contributions to the Virginia Indigent Defense Commission, which oversees legal representation of poor criminal defendants.

The Virginia Legislative Black Caucus, which endorsed the legislation Wednesday morning, called the provisions essential.

“I think Virginia has an opportunity to make sure that African Americans — Blacks in the commonwealth — get their fair share,” said the caucus’ leader, Del. Lamont Bagby, D-Henrico. “That is our focus.”

Expungement and resentencing

Northam proposes a multi-pronged approach to addressing old marijuana convictions.

All past misdemeanor marijuana charges and convictions would be automatically expunged by July 1, 2022, sealing the vast majority of criminal records related to the drugs. The legislation includes the caveat that all fines, court fees and restitution related to the charges must paid before they are cleared.

For more serious convictions, such as possession of large amounts or distribution, the legislation would allow a person to individually petition a judge to have their records expunged in light of the drug’s legalization.

And people currently serving jail or prison sentences related to marijuana charges would be entitled to have their sentences reconsidered by a judge as long as they were not convicted of possessing more than five pounds of the drug, convicted of a third felony offense or convicted of distributing the drug to minors.

“We’re going to have a multi-billion industry that we’re about to hopefully pass, so we want the folks in our communities that have been harmed and penalized by that not to still be in prison for something that’s hopefully going to be legal,” said Del. Don Scott, D-Portsmouth.

Possession limits, home grows and driving

Northam proposes limiting adults to possessing no more than one ounce of the drug, which is in line with the limits set in most other states, according to JLARC.

His legislation would also allow home cultivation, but only four plants per household, and only two of the plants could be “mature.” The legislation would require the plants not be visible from the street and “reasonable precautions” to prevent underaged access. Northam also proposes requiring each plant be tagged with the owner’s name, driver’s license number and a notation that it’s being grown for personal use.

With the drug’s legalization, criminal penalties would remain for unlicensed distribution, albeit with significantly reduced penalties.

Possessing more than an ounce but less than five pounds would result in a $25 civil fine, the current penalty for people caught with small amounts marijuana under decriminalization legislation that last passed last year.

People caught with five pounds or more would face felony charges punishable by between one and five years in prison and up to a $250,000 fine.

The punishment for a first-time charge of possession with intent to distribute would drop to a class 2 misdemeanor.

People under 21 caught with the drug would face a $250 civil penalty. Juveniles would face a maximum $200 fine. However, the legislation would allow judges to offer alternative sentencing programs that include drug treatment or education.

The legislation aims to address driving while under the influence of marijuana — which, unlike alcohol, can’t be reliably proved with a breath or blood test — by allowing a judge to infer guilt if there is an open container of marijuana in the passenger area and the accused appeared through conduct, speech and appearance to be intoxicated. (Last year lawmakers banned searches based on a police officer detecting the odor of marijuana).

Local control, referendums

Northam proposes giving local governments the authority to authorize or ban retail marijuana sales within their borders and set hours of operation.

But the legislation would also give local residents a say, allowing citizens to force a referendum that, if adopted, would open the jurisdiction to marijuana sales and, if rejected, end legal sales even if the municipality’s board has already approved them.

Local governments and residents would have less authority when it comes to manufacturing, processing and other non-public-facing marijuana businesses, though the siting of such businesses would be subject to local zoning rules.

Proposed business locations would be approved as part of the state’s licensing process, which include an opportunity for local residents and government officials to weigh in.

The legislation proposes some limits on where marijuana businesses can locate, specifically refencing locations that would disrupt churches, schools, hospitals and playgrounds. In residential neighborhoods, the licensing board could also consider arguments that a business would adversely affect real estate values.

The legislation also sets density limits, preventing any marijuana business from operating within 1,000 feet of another. And more broadly, regulators would be tasked with determining an appropriate number of licenses for a given area and respond if the number of licenses in a given area becomes “detrimental to the interest, morals, safety, or welfare of the public.”

Defining issues for Democrats are those on which there are deep divisions within the majority party. That will become clear as the General Assembly lurches toward adjournment in late February, relying on a parliamentary sleight of hand to bypass one by Republicans that threatened to squeeze the session to 30 days from the usual 46.

These issues include taxes, marijuana, paid sick leave, police reform, civil and voting rights, campaign finance, gambling and reopening public schools during the pandemic. Differences on policy are exacerbated by differences in personality, especially House Speaker Eileen Filler-Corn and Senate Majority Leader Dick Saslaw, both of Fairfax.

Virginians got a taste of both during the interminable special session that, over nearly 85 days, pivoted from repairs to the COVID-19-wracked budget and post-George Floyd police reform to an all-you-can-eat legislative buffet that restyled the General Assembly as a mini-Congress.

Expungement

House Democrats say one of their top priorities is a hold over from the special session that hit a dead end in the Senate — legislation allowing the automatic expungement of many criminal convictions.

Supporters say lingering criminal records too often pose barriers to employment and housing, making it hard for people to rebuild their lives. The Charlottesville-based Legal Aid Justice Center says they’ve worked with clients who have been turned down for apartments by landlords who cited past charges for which the applicant was never convicted.

“This bill will give people a clean slate,” said House Majority Leader Charniele Herring, D-Alexandria, who proposed the legislation. “If someone has turned their life around, they deserve a clean record.”

As proposed last year, Herring’s legislation would direct the state court system to automatically seal records for about 170 misdemeanor and felony offenses eight years after they complete their sentences, provided they don’t reoffend. Charges that don’t result in convictions would be automatically expunged soon after the case concludes.

Advocates call Virginia’s expungement laws some of the most restrictive in the country, noting the state is one of just seven that does not allow any criminal convictions to be expunged. Currently, defendants can only have charges for which they were not convicted removed from their records, and only if they file a petition with their local court and convince a judge to sign off.

The State Crime Commission endorsed the measure last year, but it was never seriously debated in the Senate, where Democrats said they opposed automating the process — an approach adopted by just a handful of states, including Pennsylvania and Michigan.

“If there’s anything the last 30 decades of criminal justice reform has taught us, it’s that automatic anything doesn’t work — or can be extremely dangerous,” said Sen. Scott Surovell, D-Fairfax. He also questioned how the Crime Commission, on which he sits, and House Democrats arrived at their list of 170 offenses that would be eligible. “There does not appear to be any policy rationale.”

Surovell says he plans to put forward legislation that expands expungement to a range of criminal convictions — likely Class 5 felonies or below with exceptions for crimes like DUI — but maintains requirements for individuals to initiate the process by petitioning the court in which they were convicted.

He acknowledged that the time and expense associated with individual petitions would pose a burden to some defendants, but argued his approach would open many more charges to potential expungement while providing a case-by-case review.

“The big picture is that the Senate supports a remedy that would give relief to tens of thousands more people in many more potential situations, but would require a petition and going in front of a judge,” he said.

Gov. Ralph Northam hasn’t weighed in on either approach but included $13 million in his proposed budget to cover the expected cost of establishing the programs.

Republican lawmakers have shown little appetite for either approach, though GOP lawmakers in the Senate have in the past supported far narrower bills limited to infractions for alcohol and drug possession by young people.

Marijuana

Last year, lawmakers decriminalized marijuana, reducing penalties for possessing small amounts of the drug to a $25 civil fine. But at the time, most Democratic leaders said they weren’t ready to begin seriously discussing legalizing recreational use of the drug.

That changed this year as the state completed two major studies of what a legal marketplace might look like in Virginia and Northam endorsed the concept, saying he’ll propose legislation that would establish a retail marketplace over the next two years.

Proponents have emphasized racial justice, noting Black Virginians have for decades born the brunt of enforcement, and Northam said he plans to put forward a bill that would seal records of past convictions and give minority communities harmed by past enforcement a leg up in the marketplace.

While lawmakers in the House say they believe they have the votes to pass the legislation, leaders in the Senate were more circumspect, giving it 50-50 odds. One Democratic senator, Chap Petersen, D-Fairfax City, put out a statement chastising his colleagues for making marijuana a focus of the legislative session in the midst of a pandemic that has shuttered schools.

The Northam-backed legislation has not yet been filed and the details are expected to generate significant debate. In the Senate, lawmakers are expected to establish a subcommittee dedicated exclusively to the topic.

Mandatory minimums

Heading into the special session, the State Crime Commission endorsed legislation that would eliminate all mandatory minimum sentences from the state code — a sweeping proposal that supporters say would restore sentencing discretion to judges and juries and end what one group of prosecutors called “irrationally lengthy prison sentences that fuel mass incarceration.”

Most of the mandatory minimum sentences on the books in Virginia address driving while intoxicated, narcotics, child pornography and weapon violations, according to the research undertaken by the Crime Commission, though researchers said the offenses make up a relatively small proportion of convictions in any given year, accounting for just 3 percent of convictions in the past five years.

The Crime Commission said studies about the effectiveness of mandatory minimums, most of which were adopted as part of tough-on-crime legislation that swept statehouses in the ‘80s and ‘90s, are inconclusive.

Republicans have assailed the proposals as “by far the most egregious ‘soft on crime’ proposal yet in the Democrats’ attempts to make life easier on criminals.”

The death penalty

Lawmakers in Virginia have debated the death penalty off and on for years, but even under Democratic control a repeal failed to make it to a full vote before the House or Senate, dying in committee or never getting a hearing.

Lawmakers agreed to revisit the issue, which remains timely with two people on death row, this year. As in years past, a repeal has strong support from faith leaders around the state.

Legislation patroned by Del. Jay Jones, D-Norfolk, in the House and Surovell in the Senate would change the sentences of the two people currently awaiting execution to life imprisonment with no possibility of parole.

“The commonwealth shouldn’t be in the business of killing its citizens, plain and simple, and it is time we meet the moment and end this despicable practice once and for all,” Jones said in a statement.

Private prisons

Virginia has just one private prison — Lawrenceville Correctional Center in Brunswick County — which opened in the late ‘90s as part of a pilot program.

Sen. Adam Ebbin, D-Alexandria, is pushing to bring its operation back under state control. At Ebbin’s request, last year lawmakers asked the Department of Corrections to study the cost of assuming state control over the facility.

Prison officials reported last month that it would likely cost the state $9.3 million more per year to operate the facility than it is currently paying GEO Group, largely because the state pays its correctional officers and other prison staff more than the private contractor.

With the finding in hand, Ebbin has filed legislation that would prohibit the state from contracting out prison management, effectively ending the relationship with GEO.

“Putting cost cutting above all else can be antithetical to the pursuit of justice,” Ebbin said, saying staff at the prison are overworked and underpaid. “At the end of the day, studies show that Virginia is sacrificing basic standards of care at the expense of humane incarceration.”

Felony penalties for drug possession

Some lawmakers are also pursuing legislation they hope will eventually lead the state to reduce penalties for drug possession beyond marijuana, arguing the criminal records they create impose burdens that only make recovery from addiction more difficult.

Del. Sally Hudson, D-Charlottesville, filed a bill that asks the Crime Commission to study the effectiveness and alternatives to the state’s criminal rules governing possession of drugs like heroin, methamphetamine and cocaine.

“Nothing about the way we’re approaching drug convictions (is) rooted in medical science,” Hudson said during a forum this week hosted by Justice Forward. “If you’ve got a felony conviction on your record, there’s a whole suite of career options that are now closed to you.”

Facial recognition, body camera footage and probation violations

Democratic lawmakers have also filed bills that would:

• Require local governments to sign off on the use of facial recognition technology by law enforcement. (HB 2031, authored by Del. Lashrecse Aird, D-Petersburg)
• Begin tracking data about how bail and other forms of pre-trial supervision and detention are used. (HB 1945, authored by Del. Clint Jenkins, D-Chesapeake.)
• Impose limits on when and for how long people can be put back in prison for technical probation violations. (HB 2038, authored by Del. Don Scott, D-Portsmouth)
• Require police departments to release video or audio recordings that capture officers discharging firearms, stun guns or chemical weapons. (HB 1941, authored by Del. Sam Rasoul, D-Roanoke.)

Meanwhile, GOP lawmakers, who have largely opposed reforms enacted to date by Democrats, have filed legislation that would roll back limits on police stops advocates say lead to racial profiling. They’ve also brought back legislation filed last year aimed at increasing transparency of the state’s parole board and strengthening victim notification requirements.

Democratic leaders in the Virginia House of Delegates have stripped three Republicans of some committee assignments after they signed a letter casting doubt on the results of the presidential election and urging Vice President Mike Pence to block the lopsided Democratic victory in Virginia.

House Speaker Eileen Filler-Corn, D-Fairfax, stripped Dels. Dave LaRock, R-Loudoun, Ronnie Campbell, R-Rockbridge and Mark Cole, R-Spotsylvania, of one committee assignment each. They were not booted from all their committee seats.

LaRock was booted from the Transportation Committee, Cole was removed from the Privileges and Elections Committee and Campbell lost his spot on the Courts of Justice Committee.

“By seeking to disenfranchise millions of Virginians and undercut faith in our democratic institutions, Delegate Dave LaRock, Delegate Mark Cole and Delegate Ronnie Campbell showed exceedingly poor judgment and conducted themselves in a manner unbecoming of their office,” said Kunal Atit, a spokesman for Filler-Corn. “Their attempt to cast doubt on our elections process in order to impede the peaceful transfer of power between one president and another is an affront to our democracy and violates the public trust.”

Prior to last week’s rally in D.C. that culminated in a deadly mob attack on the U.S. Capitol, LaRock spearheaded a letter addressed to Pence that asked him to block some Electoral College votes for President-elect Joe Biden.

“Should you, as Vice President, announce a winner based on a tally of unconstitutionally and fraudulently elected Presidential Electors, it would create a rent in the fabric of the nation,” the delegates said in the letter, which was on LaRock’s letterhead and co-signed by Cole and Campbell.

LaRock in particular is facing mounting calls to resign after he offered a defense of last week’s event and used an outdated racial term by saying his detractors should “focus on the needs of the colored community.”

LaRock appears undaunted, telling constituents in a recent message he isn’t going anywhere.

“I have stayed loyal to the president even now as RINOs are jumping ship and that won’t end,” he said. “Democrat Trump haters want to humiliate our president and they want to intimidate me and make me unelectable.”

A bill to allow Sunday hunting on public lands was dealt a swift death on the first day of the 2021 session by the House Agriculture, Chesapeake and Natural Resources Committee.

The proposal, which was carried by Del. James Edmunds, R-Halifax, failed 16-6, with both Democratic and Republican committee members split on the issue.

This is the second year Edmunds has championed the expansion of Sunday hunting in Virginia to public as well as private lands. He had argued that not allowing hunters to use public lands often paid for using the proceeds from hunting license sales is unfair.

The issue has long been a bone of contention in Virginia, which is one of only five states to maintain such a ban on its books. The General Assembly lifted the prohibition on Sunday hunting on private lands in 2014.

While committee chair Del. Ken Plum, D-Fairfax, said about 50 people had turned out to provide virtual testimony on the bill, only one speaker in favor of the measure and one against were allowed to testify due to time constraints.

Via text, Edmunds said he was “disappointed that hunters contribute the most to the purchase of many public lands but are the only user groups not allowed to use it.”

“I think it is very hypocritical,” he said. “I really believe that many of those who voted against it voted against hunting more than they voted against Sunday hunting.”

Edmunds said he plans to reintroduce the bill in 2022.

He’s baaaaack.

On Wednesday, former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe officially announced he’s running for a second term, launching a rare comeback bid pundits and political strategists say will be difficult, but not impossible, for other gubernatorial hopefuls to stop.

“Certainly he comes into the race in a very formidable position,” said veteran political commentator Bob Holsworth. “He’s a popular former governor. He has tons of resources. And he loves to campaign. At the same time, the open question in this campaign is whether he is the person for the moment.”

Long an open secret in state politics, McAuliffe made his 2021 campaign official in an appearance at a Richmond elementary school, where he was joined by a group of Black leaders. Among them were Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney, House Majority Leader Charniele Herring, D-Alexandria, and Sen. Louise Lucas, D-Portsmouth, who will serve as co-chairs of McAuliffe’s campaign.

It appeared to be a nod to the complicated racial and gender dynamics of the 2021 Democratic field, which already includes Sen. Jennifer McClellan, D-Richmond, and Del. Jennifer Carroll Foy, D-Prince William, both of whom have the potential to be the first woman elected governor in Virginia and the first Black woman elected governor of any state. Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax, the only Black person currently elected to statewide office, is also seeking the Democratic nomination.

Quentin Kidd, director of the Wason Center for Public Policy at Christopher Newport University, said he thinks it’s accurate to call McAuliffe the presumptive frontrunner in the Democratic primary, partly because McAuliffe’s been “shaping the behavior” of the other candidates for months. But the other candidates getting in early, Kidd said, may sharpen the question of whether McAuliffe, last elected in 2013, is the right candidate for 2021.

“This is the era of George Floyd, the era of Black Lives Matter, the era of people of color being able to express their voice and sort of take their place in society,” Kidd said. “I think he gets that’s sort of conceptually his big challenge.”

As a former Democratic National Committee chairman and close ally of Bill and Hillary Clinton, McAuliffe has a national profile and prodigious fundraising abilities.

Running as a quasi-incumbent who already did the job for four years, McAuliffe brings a level of statewide name recognition the other candidates lack, a challenge they’ll have to overcome by introducing themselves to rank-and-file Democrats who aren’t close followers of the state legislature.

“Terry is almost universally known by Democratic voters,” said a Democratic strategist who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak candidly about the race. “His base is in Northern Virginia. It’s going to be extremely tough, especially in a COVID world, to campaign and try to break through.”

Current Gov. Ralph Northam, who, with the help of a Democratic-led General Assembly, has signed reams of progressive legislation that would’ve been unthinkable in the McAuliffe era when Republicans held the legislature, cannot run for re-election due to Virginia’s term limits.

At his announcement, McAuliffe highlighted education as a top policy priority, promising the “biggest, boldest investment in education in Virginia history.” Specifically, he said he’s planning to put an extra $2 billion a year into education to fund teacher pay raises, address segregation in schools and end racial achievement gaps, expand preschool availability for at-risk 3- and 4-year-olds, provide every student with internet access and improve workforce development programs.

“The one thing we cannot afford to do is to keep Black and Brown and rural children from being able to access what they need to get a quality education,” McAuliffe said. “We need to make sure that every child is prepared for 21st-century jobs. Virginians are desperately ready for this.”

Both Democrats and Republicans have recently worked to increase education funding and raise teacher pay, but many of those efforts were put on hold earlier this year amid pandemic-related uncertainty over the health of the state budget. McAuliffe’s campaign explained that he’d consider new revenue from legalized marijuana sales and casinos to boost education funding.

McAuliffe also touted his efforts to bring businesses into the state and restore the voting rights of people convicted of felonies, a move he characterized as striking a blow against racist laws from Virginia’s past.

Asked what he’d say to Democratic voters who wish he had stayed out of the race and used his considerable resources to allow Virginia to make history by electing a Black woman as governor, McAuliffe said he’s “running on a big agenda of thinking big and being bold.”

He then deferred to Lucas, who said McAuliffe has “a track record of being responsive to Black and Brown communities.”

“We’re standing with him based on what he has done and what we know he can do,” Lucas said. “This has nothing to do with race.”

Some see it differently.

“If the narrative becomes Terry is just standing in the way of a qualified Black woman and that’s it, he could really be toast,” the Democratic strategist said. “And no amount of Louise Lucas quotes are going to pull his ass out of the fire on that one.”

On the Republican side, the contest is off to a chaotic start, with Sen. Amanda Chase, R-Chesterfield, threatening to run as an independent after the party chose to pick its nominee via convention instead of a more open primary. Former House Speaker Kirk Cox, the only other Republican currently in the field, has said Chase will “fade from relevance” if she follows through with her plan. But after more than a decade of losses in statewide races, even a small split in the Republican vote could wreck the GOP’s chances of winning back the Executive Mansion.

Chase has recently been encouraging her supporters to contact Republican officials to urge them to reconsider the convention decision.

McClellan, Carroll Foy and Fairfax all took slightly different tacks in welcoming McAuliffe to the race.

In a public strategy memo, the McClellan campaign argued that, for all the “bluster” of his announcement, McAuliffe underperformed in his first run for governor in 2009, when he lost a Democratic primary to Sen. Creigh Deeds, D-Bath, who went on to lose to former GOP Gov. Bob McDonnell. In beating former GOP Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli to win his first term in 2013, the campaign said, McAuliffe “barely won” a contest with low turnout compared to 1989, when former Gov. Doug Wilder made history by becoming America’s first elected Black governor.

Carroll Foy drew a contrast with her own personal story as someone who struggled growing up in the impoverished city of Petersburg, calling McAuliffe “emblematic of the status quo that has simply left too many people behind.”

Fairfax, who is still trying to move past the sexual assault allegations leveled against him in 2019, didn’t opine on McAuliffe directly, saying he’s proud of what Democrats have accomplished in the past three years, after McAuliffe’s term ended.

Holsworth said it’s fair to call McAuliffe the favorite, but “far too early to anoint him as the nominee given the quality of his challengers.”

“In conventional times you would think that McAuliffe would have the kind of advantage that people would not be able to overcome,” he said. “But this is an unconventional race for the Democrats in an enormously sort of challenging time for the state and the country.”

A panel of retired judges on Wednesday picked the eight Virginia citizens who will serve on the state’s new redistricting commission, finalizing the group that will handle the important task of redrawing the state’s political maps when new U.S. Census data arrives.

The judges spent hours trying to solve the puzzle of winnowing more than 60 finalists down to eight people who, by law, were supposed to represent Virginia’s geographic, racial and gender diversity.

“We’ve got to check a number of boxes here,” said retired Judge Pamela Baskervill, who chaired the five-judge panel assembled to choose the citizen members.

More than 1,200 people applied for the eight seats late last year. But the judges could only pick from four lists of 16 finalists submitted by four legislative leaders in the General Assembly.

The judges picked six men and two women to fill the eight citizen seats on the 16-member commission.

Four of the chosen members are White (three non-Hispanic and one Hispanic), two are Black, one is Asian American and one is multi-racial.

Three of the members are from Northern Virginia and two are from the Richmond area. Southwest Virginia, Southside and Hampton Roads will each have one citizen representative on the commission.

The group includes four self-identified Democrats and four who identified as Republicans.

The selected citizen members are:

Nominees of Senate President Pro Tempore Louise Lucas, D-Portsmouth:

• James Abrenio, 37, of Fairfax, a trial lawyer.
• Sean S. Kumar, 41, of Alexandria, a strategic advisor and lawyer.

Nominees of House Speaker Eileen Filler-Corn, D-Fairfax:

• Brandon Christopher Hutchins, 39, of Virginia Beach, a military veteran and health care professional.
• Greta J. Harris, 60, of Richmond, president and CEO of the Better Housing Coalition.

Nominees of Senate Minority Leader Tommy Norment, R-James City:

• Marvin W. Gilliam Jr., 64, of Bristol, a retired coal mining executive.
• Richard O. Harrell III, 74, of South Boston, a trucking executive.

Nominees of House Minority Leader Todd Gilbert, R-Shenandoah:

• Jose A. Feliciano Jr., 52, of Fredericksburg, a military veteran and federal agent with the FCC’s public safety bureau.
• Mackenzie K. Babichenko, 36, of Mechanicsville, an assistant prosecutor in Hanover County.

(Note: Some applicants were nominated as finalists by multiple legislative leaders, but the judges had to pick two from each leader’s list.)

The other eight seats on the commission will be filled by sitting state legislators.

The commission, approved by voters in a ballot referendum last year, will soon get to work preparing to redraw Virginia’s legislative and congressional districts, a process previously handled wholly by the General Assembly. Because of uncertainty surrounding the 2020 Census data, the exact timeline for the commission’s work is unclear. New maps are supposed to be in place in time for House of Delegates elections this November, but Census delays may make it impossible to redraw the districts in time.

Whenever the state receives solid data on population shifts, the commission’s decisions could impact the partisan tilt of the statehouse and the congressional delegation for the next decade.

Critics of the commission proposal warned that it lacked adequate provisions to ensure a diverse group of people would be at the table for the next redistricting process. But diversity seemed to be a top priority for the judges, with their discussion centering more on whether they were achieving the right balance rather than the backgrounds and qualifications of specific applicants.

Comparing notes on which candidates stood out to them, the judges initially narrowed the finalists down to a group of 19. They then realized their shortlist lacked any Hispanic applicants and didn’t include anyone from the Eastern Shore/Northern Neck region. The panel made a point of adding at least one Hispanic applicant (Feliciano) after retired retired Judge Larry B. Kirksey said he was troubled by the lack of Hispanic representation. But several judges said it was nearly impossible to create a perfectly representative commission given their limited options for just eight slots.

“’We can only work with the list of folks that came to us from the members of the General Assembly,” said retired Judge Joanne F. Alper. “We didn’t have access to the whole 1,200.”

Alper said she felt it was important to include at least one member from the Southside and Southwest regions, even though their shortlist only included White men from those areas.

“You need somebody at least that has some knowledge of that region,” she said.

Some progressives had raised alarms that the pool of applicants was disproportionately White and wealthy, pointing to an analysis by the Virginia Public Access Project.

The application process was open to everyone willing to fill out the form and provide three reference letters, but the judges also grappled with strict, General Assembly-imposed limitations on who was eligible to serve.

To prevent cronyism, the legislature passed rules barring political aides, lobbyists, partisan operatives and family members of elected officials from serving on the commission. But those rules also forced the judges to reluctantly strike one applicant whose wife previously worked on Capitol Hill.

Several judges said they were impressed by both the quantity and quality of the applicants interested in serving on the commission.

“I’m just amazed by the diversity, the energy, the brilliance,” said Kirksey.  “Not just brightness. There is brilliance on this list.”

Suppose your livelihood depends on persuading policymakers to draft legislation and adopt regulations to favor an interest or a client. It’s called lobbying, defined in dictionaries as organized efforts to influence legislators. It’s been around since the inception of the Republic, and it has historically required proximity and access to people in power. The very name derives from advocates who would crowd the corridors of power — lobbies — for some fleeting face time with policymakers.

Now, imagine that the whole in-person proximity part vanishes.

That’s exactly what has happened to Virginia’s corps of lobbyists accustomed to their midwinter encampments on Capitol Square thanks to the coronavirus pandemic and the General Assembly’s decision to largely meet virtually in the 2021 session that convenes in less than a month.

While seasoned veteran lobbyists who’ve plied the hallways, galleries, committee rooms and offices for decades have negotiated the shift to varying degrees, rookies with few connections and resources and particularly ordinary Virginians with pressing, poignant causes are at a serious disadvantage.

Gone, at least for the coming socially distanced session, are the days when a lobbyist could saunter by a lawmaker’s Capitol Square office and pop in for an intricately rehearsed impromptu pitch for or against an obscure clause in a bill that could mean millions to a client’s bottom line. In its place is a numbing profusion of texts, emails, livestreams, videoconferences and phone calls unfathomable a year ago.

The challenge it creates to effective advocacy on behalf of clients, say several longtime lobbyists interviewed over the past week, is getting noticed among the hundreds of emails that pack the inboxes of legislative leaders and senior administration officials in an hour when the legislative session is in full throttle. That’s where longtime personal relationships — the ability to shoot a text to a committee chairman’s private cell phone alerting him or her to an urgent, just-emailed document and setting up a conference call with industry experts the next day — pays decisive dividends. Information and access are the currency of the realm, and those who have it start every inning on third base, nobody out and the clean-up batter stepping to the plate.

Unlike most of the economy, the pandemic has left the lobbying industry largely unscathed. Solo practitioners and those connected to prestigious firms say business is good. Turns out that monied interests will pay what it takes, particularly in challenging times, to secure effective advocacy for their priorities, according to the lobbyists, none of whom could discuss client work or finances for the record.

For causes that rely heavily on compelling face-to-face interaction between real, everyday folks and their delegates and senators, the pandemic has created daunting obstacles. These are groups in need of help from their government but unable to pay platoons of elite lobbyists to shepherd their causes through the legislative gauntlet.

I’ve seen the real-people approach applied by a number of movements. They include textile and furniture workers whose jobs disappeared when their Southside factories shut down and headed overseas thanks to global trade deals in the 1990s. I saw it in anguished parents of autistic children who pleaded for years to have their children’s conditions covered by insurance before they finally succeeded. I have seen members of gun rights groups noisily assert encroachments on their Second Amendment rights even as they freely prowled the grounds with war weapons slung from their shoulders. I’ve seen it from mothers and fathers who lost children to a heavily armed madman on April 16, 2007, at Virginia Tech, weeping as they begged legislators for commonsense restrictions on the commonwealth’s permissive firearms laws.

Sometimes, it is enormously effective when hundreds of ordinary people meet their legislators and speak firsthand of personal grief and hardship. Sometimes, it’s counterproductive. I have seen lawmakers’ reactions range from teary eyes and sympathetic hugs to clenched fists and sharp words.

No group finds more sympathetic ears at the General Assembly when its officers and members turn out for their in-person lobby day than those which represent military veterans — the American Legion, the Veterans of Foreign Wars among the better known. Together, they present a united front every year behind a handful of proposals under the auspices of an umbrella organization known as the Joint Leadership Council of Veterans Service Organizations. They’re very effective.

In November, Virginia voters resoundingly approved an amendment to the state Constitution that affords disabled veterans a break on personal property taxes they pay on an automobile. That measure had to win passage in two consecutive legislative sessions separated by a House election to make it onto last month’s ballot. A similar constitutional amendment a few years earlier gave disabled vets a real estate tax waiver. And last year, the General Assembly passed a new law that allows additional time for the ballots of active-duty troops posted overseas to arrive after an election. Income tax breaks for disabled vets remains a priority carried over from last year.

How do they advocate for their current priorities?

“It’s very different trying to Zoom (videoconference) with individual delegates and senators. We have to do it but it’s not satisfactory,” said Dan Boyer, an unpaid lobbyist representing the VFW on the JLC, who drives four hours each way from his home near Galax to Capitol Square four or five times most sessions. Probably not so many in 2021.

“When we would have our lobby day, I’d stop in and meet with maybe 16 people — delegates, senators or their aides — and they had seen those VFW and American Legion hats everywhere up and down the halls all day, and it made a difference,” said Boyer, an Air Force veteran who served three tours in Vietnam in the 1960s.

Lobbyists are, by necessity, keeping their wish lists lean, focusing on clients’ priorities because of the limitations of remote lobbying but also because of new bill pre-filing deadlines and a change that will likely make the already short 2021 session even briefer.

Sessions in even-number years run for 60 days, longer than odd-number sessions because new biennial budgets have to be built from scratch in years evenly divisible by two. Odd-number years, without the heavy lifting of budget writing, traditionally run for 46 days.

The state Constitution, however, prescribes only 30 days for the odd-year sessions while giving the House and Senate the option of adding 15 days on a two-thirds vote of each chamber. Since the last overhaul of the state Constitution in the early 1970s, the vote to extend was a foregone formality. For 2021, however, Republican leaders of both chambers say GOP members will oppose the 15-day extension, leaving the House and Senate well short of their two-thirds majorities and possibly setting up an unprecedented final adjournment before Valentine’s Day.

No matter the metric, 2021 will be a wildly different winter session as lobbyists do what they can from a distance and long for a post-COVID world and whatever that new normal will be. They know that a pandemic hangover is going to last a while, but that this too shall pass — maybe like a kidney stone, but it will pass.

“I understand the desire for someone to come back and have a sequel, second chapter,” said one Virginia Democrat. “But times change, and new leaders evolve.”

Terry McAuliffe has long signaled he wants his old job back as Virginia governor. But a slew of political groups focused on women and Black voters have a message before he jumps in the race: It’s not your time.

McAuliffe’s 2021 run — he is planning to announce on Wednesday, POLITICO confirmed — has rankled a number of groups across the commonwealth and country. They argue he shouldn’t be trying to reclaim the post he vacated three years ago when there are already two Black female candidates in the field— state Sen. Jennifer McClellan and state Del. Jennifer Carroll Foy.

“We’ve never elected a Black woman governor in this country’s history,” said Glynda Carr, CEO of the Higher Heights PAC, which supports Black women running for political office.

The State Board of Elections in Virginia voted Wednesday to certify the state’s election results, two days later than expected because of a COVID-19 outbreak in the city of Richmond’s voter registration office.

The board’s 3-0 vote certified results for president, U.S. Senate, U.S. House elections and state constitutional amendments in a 10-minute meeting without comment, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported. Virginia’s certification comes as former Vice President Joe Biden prepares to assume the presidency and President Donald Trump continues to sow doubt about the national election.

On Twitter, former GOP Rep. Barbara Comstock has deemed some conspiracy theories about a stolen election “tin foil hat stuff.”

Soon-to-be former GOP Rep. Denver Riggleman agrees. And he’s concerned other Republicans may be validating untruths by staying silent.

“If you see things that are false, or you see things that could be damaging based on hyperbole or conspiracy theories, you have a duty to speak out,” Riggleman said in an interview with the Mercury Wednesday. “It’s what you’re supposed to do as an elected official.”

After losing a GOP primary this year that limited him to a single term in Congress, Riggleman has openly condemned conspiratorial thinking on the right, most notably by taking on the fringe QAnon movement.

In the past week of commentary since former Democratic Vice President Joe Biden defeated Republican President Donald Trump, Riggleman’s seen a similar unwillingness to separate reality from fantasy, both from “grifters” seeking personal gain and from elected officials who know the election’s over but don’t want to say anything that might cost them politically.

“We’ve been through a lot of presidential transitions,” he said. “In two months, we’re going to have a new president. Period.”

Virginia Republicans who still potentially have something to lose by angering Republican voters have been less eager to publicly dispute baseless claims that the presidential election was fraudulent.

Some have lent credence to the fraud claims. Others have tried to strike a middle ground by saying post-election challenges need time to play out.

On Tuesday, the Republican Party of Virginia emailed supporters asking them to give money to an “election integrity fund” because the election is “under attack by corrupt Democrats.”

“We cannot stand idly by and let them get away with this!” read the email from RPV Chairman Rich Anderson, which also asked for donations to support Republicans in next year’s gubernatorial race.

Claims of widespread voting fraud in the 2020 election have been repeatedly debunked by media outlets and election officials. That hasn’t stopped President Donald Trump from insisting he won the election, even though unofficial numbers show former Vice President Joe Biden won the popular vote and will win the Electoral College. So far, none of the Trump team’s legal challenges have gained serious traction in the courts.

More than a week after Election Day, few prominent Virginia Republicans have said they accept Biden’s victory.

Rep. Morgan Griffith, R-Salem, asked his Facebook supporters to contribute to President Donald Trump’s post-election fund, saying: “If there is the possibility of illegal activity both sides have a duty to request intervention from the courts.”

The rhetoric on the fundraising page he linked to went further, using the phrases “fraud,” “steal” and “left-wing mob.” The fine print at the bottom of that page notes that half the money raised would go to a “recount account” and half would be used for “general election debt retirement until such debt is retired.”

Congressman-elect Bob Good, who defeated Riggleman in a Republican primary earlier this year in central Virginia’s 5th District and bested Democrat Cameron Webb in the general election last week, also took to Facebook to declare his continued support for Trump.

“If we allow this to go unchallenged, neither Republicans nor others playing by the rules will ever again win a close presidential election,” Good said.

Rep. Ben Cline, R-Botetourt, told his Facebook followers he had signed onto a letter asking Attorney General Bill Barr what he was doing about “widespread reports of irregularities.”

Rep. Rob Wittman, R-Montross, issued a general statement on the importance of election integrity.

“In accordance with each state’s laws, every legally cast vote should be counted and every ineligible vote should not,” Wittman said.

Efforts to reach Good and the incumbent Republican congressmen were unsuccessful Wednesday.

Sen. Amanda Chase, R-Chesterfield, a Republican candidate for governor in 2021, has perhaps been most brazen in perpetuating the fraud claims. But her comments at a protest over the weekend claiming, without evidence, that fraud had occurred in Virginia drew little public pushback from other elected Republicans.

In a statement this week, the Democratic Party of Virginia said the state GOP has ”let conspiracy theorists and right-wing extremists take over their party.”

“The rest of the country is working hard to move on from the national nightmare of the last four years, but Virginia Republicans seem intent on going down with the ship,” said DPVA spokesman Grant Fox.

There have been no documented examples of fraudulent ballots in Virginia. However, there have been a few claims that Republican observers were improperly prevented from watching election officials conduct business, most notably in Chesterfield County outside Richmond.

In a statement to the Mercury, Virginia Elections Commissioner Chris Piper said his agency will be conducting its usual post-election report to identify what can be improved going forward.

“Virginians voted in record numbers this year in the midst of a global pandemic and election officials across the Commonwealth should be praised for how smoothly the election was conducted,” Piper said.

Even though he lost his seat this year and is waging a battle against disinformation with mixed success, Riggleman said he’s convinced “the sky’s not falling.” Biden will be president, he said, but Republican gains in Congress will mean divided government. And hopefully, he said, a retreat from the fringes and a move toward moderate governance.

“The crazy elements are going to have to be suppressed with common sense,” Riggleman said.

With Virginia’s redistricting debate now settled by voters, state lawmakers approved a package of rules Monday for how the new, bipartisan map-drawing commission will work next year.

Democrats’ dispute over the redistricting commission, which almost 66 percent of Virginia voters approved last week, delayed the formal conclusion of the special session that began in August. To settle it, legislative leaders and Gov. Ralph Northam agreed to pass a post-election budget amendment allowing the commission to be set up and begin its work next year.

Democrats in the House of Delegates had opposed putting the language in the budget as the session seemed to be coming to a close last month. They argued voters should decide on the constitutional amendment creating the commission as it stood, without any improvements added legislatively.

On Monday, a few House Democrats gave speeches saying they still feel the commission idea is flawed, but will respect the result.

“The people have spoken in great numbers and they wanted to see changes in how the redistricting process happens in Virginia,” said Del. Cia Price, D-Newport News, an outspoken critic of the commission proposal who called it “regrettable that there was so much confusion and misinformation” about the redistricting question on the ballot.

The House voted 99-0 to approve the redistricting language. It also easily cleared the Senate.

Proponents of the change have hailed the commission as a much-needed change to a system that has given elected legislators free rein to draw districts to benefit themselves or their party behind closed doors.

“From the start, this movement has been about putting the voices of citizens above politicians and political parties,” the redistricting reform group OneVirginia2021 said in a statement celebrating the commission’s passage.

Voters approved a constitutional amendment creating a 16-person commission with equal numbers of Republicans and Democrats and seats split between sitting legislators and citizen members. Once new U.S. Census data is received in 2021, the commission will redraw Virginia’s congressional and legislative districts, a process that could determine partisan control in Richmond.

The commission’s members will be appointed in the coming weeks, and the panel has to hold its first meeting before Feb. 1.

The budget language approved Monday lays out who is eligible to serve on the commission and the process it will follow.

Among other things, the language:

• Bans people who hold partisan offices, political aides, campaign employees, lobbyists and others from being appointed to the citizen seats to the commission. It also bans political insiders’ relatives from serving on the commission.
• Stipulates that the commission’s makeup should reflect Virginia’s “racial, ethnic, geographic and gender diversity.”
• Declares that the commission’s records, including internal communications, are public and subject to disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act.
• Bans commission members from discussing redistricting-related matters with any third parties “outside of a public meeting or hearing.”
• Requires the Supreme Court of Virginia to appoint two experts, or special masters, to draw court-overseen maps if the commission and the General Assembly fail to agree on their own. The special masters would be picked from lists submitted by political leaders from both parties.
• Requires any Supreme Court judge related to a member of Congress or the General Assembly to recuse themselves from any redistricting decision. Current Justice Teresa M. Chafin is the sister of state Sen. Ben Chafin, R-Lebanon.

That sense of whiplash you may have felt as you watched election returns in Virginia after its largest turnout election ever —more than 4.1 million votes — is not your imagination.

Some Republicans were excited for most of Tuesday evening as ballots cast on Election Day at Virginia’s nearly 2,500 polling places were tabulated and posted. President Donald Trump appeared to be beating Democrat Joe Biden in the reliably blue commonwealth, and it appeared that Republican novice Daniel Gade might unseat U.S. Sen. Mark Warner, a former governor and the dean of Virginia’s Democratic elected officeholders.

Then along came the 2.7 million in-person and mailed absentee ballots that Virginians had been casting for weeks. That’s when reality crashed down on the state’s GOP – some harder than others.

After The Associated Press called the race for Warner the instant polls closed – and before any actual votes were counted – Gade taunted Warner and the AP, citing State Department of Elections returns that showed him ahead by 250,000 votes with 42 percent of precincts reporting.

“I got something for you, AP. You better walk it back,” he told an Election Night coterie of supporters. “Just like all of us conceded nothing during this entire race, I concede nothing. I’m coming for you, Mark Warner!”

AP’s call proved correct after the early and absentee votes were posted. Warner cruised to an 11 percentage-point victory and a third term in the Senate, and a chastened Gade tweeted a more graceful concession Wednesday morning.

Aside from his rookie mistake of sounding off with so little of the total vote counted, Gade’s frustration is relatable. Getting unofficial returns in conflicting, consecutive dumps is foreign to our experience of a sure and quick tally of the Election Day vote followed by a smattering of absentees that were rarely significant. This year, those early and absentee ballots were the tail that wagged the dog. The bifurcated process confused and vexed those who aren’t news nerds or politics junkies. Even some network pundits and cable news talking heads were flummoxed, voicing alarm nationally that Trump was blowing Biden’s doors off in a state where no Republican has won a statewide election in 11 years.

Chris Piper, Virginia’s election commissioner, says there’s got to be a better way.

“Election Day votes were tallied first. So those votes that came in before Election Day were a big dump later on in the evening, and it significantly changed things,” Piper said. “The question is how can we get those early votes in more quickly.”

For a few hours, it created a misleading impression because of the disparate ways and times Democrats and Republicans cast their ballots.

“I think one party’s voters chose to vote mostly early, and another party’s voters chose to vote mostly in person on Election Day, and it’s hard to balance the reporting of both of those at the same time,” Piper said.

The dismay created by AP’s and other news organizations’ early race calls for Democrats who appeared hopelessly behind in the Department of Elections’ online count found its way to Piper’s office Tuesday night, even though neither he nor his department has any role in proclaiming winners. That rests solely with the media.

“We got a lot of questions during the evening: ‘How can you call it for Warner when he’s down by 500,000 votes,’” Piper said. “It’s hard answering that question.”

While the counting and reporting process created consternation, Virginia executed its election very well compared to many other states. Some of the credit goes to the state’s seasoned election administrators and the time they had to work the bugs out. Much of it goes to a raft of new election reforms that took effect this year, many of them enacted last winter by a General Assembly in its first year of Democratic control.

New laws rolled back decades of Republican restrictions and liberalized absentee and early in-person voting. They eliminated the requirement to cite a reason for voting absentee rather than on Election Day and the requirement that voters present government-issued photo identification at polling places. To encourage home-sheltered voting in the face of the coronavirus pandemic, lawmakers provided funding to have stamped, self-addressed envelopes for voters to use in returning their completed ballots. And, starting this year, Virginians had the option of casting ballots in-person up to 45 days before the election at local registrars’ offices and designated local satellite voting facilities.

In some large localities, lines stretching the length of several football fields were not uncommon as the election drew nigh, but most reports showed queues moving briskly. Piper says that was because registrars had time to adapt their processes and improve efficiency.

Perhaps the most important advantage, in hindsight, has been around for a while: the leeway Virginia law gives its registrars to process and count absentee ballots before the election.

By Wednesday morning, Virginia’s preliminary tally was over and the state avoided the pressure-cooker spectacle that consumed election officials in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona, Nevada and neighboring North Carolina. Those battlegrounds had denied their local election officials the ability to get a jump on absentee counting. So, with a razor-thin margin and the presidency hanging in the balance as the whole world watched, those states began the laborious, meticulous, round-the-clock ordeal of counting absentee ballots on Tuesday. They were still at it Friday, with some eyeing another week of work.

Forty-eight hours after polls closed in Nevada, its six electoral votes remained in long-term limbo as Biden nursed a slim lead over Trump in a deliberately unhurried process in which the state’s administrators shrugged off appeals for urgency. Mail-in ballots postmarked on or before Nov. 3 can be received through tomorrow, and it could be the end of this week before complete totals are available, a Nevada election official said Thursday.

That’s not to say that Virginia’s election process is free of warts. The registrar’s sloppy handling of some absentee ballots in Henrico County raised legitimate questions about Democratic U.S. Rep. Abigail Spanberger’s paper-thin lead over her GOP challenger, Del. Nick Freitas, based on complete but unofficial returns in the 7th Congressional District race.

“We’re all going to sit down and look at the election and how it went,” Piper said. “There were a lot of different things we did this year that we hadn’t done in the past. Overall, I am going to credit the registrars for the hard work that they did to implement these things. But, certainly, there are ways we can get better at it and we’ll continue to work on that.”

And be glad, perhaps, that we’re not Nevada.

The Associated Press on Sunday projected that U.S. Rep. Abigail Spanberger will be reelected to her seat in Virginia’s 7th District after a dayslong count of votes that was prolonged by mail-in votes in the midst of the pandemic.

Spanberger, a Democrat, is nearly 8,000 votes ahead of Republican Del. Nick Freitas in the strip-shaped district in central Virginia that includes Culpeper, Chesterfield, Henrico and Nottoway counties and skirts to the west of Richmond.

Spanberger’s apparent result means that the only non-incumbent to win a seat in Congress from Virginia was a member of the incumbent’s own party. The partisan breakdown remains seven Democrats to four Republicans.

The apparently comfortable margins of victory for both former vice president Joe Biden and Sen. Mark R. Warner (D) in Virginia on Tuesday extended an 11-year record of dominance for Democrats in statewide races and cemented the commonwealth’s status as reliably blue.

But at the local and regional level, a different dynamic holds — as evidenced by Republican strength in three close congressional contests driven by rural and military voters energized by support for President Trump.

The results suggest how much the state mirrors the nation as a whole, becoming more polarized and less attuned to the old “Virginia way” of consensus politics, said Mark Rozell, dean of the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University.

“This was an intensified partisan vote,” Rozell said.

Democratic U.S. Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia has won a third term to office.
Warner defeated Republican challenger Daniel Gade on Tuesday in a low-key race whose outcome was never in doubt.

Democrats have not lost a statewide election in Virginia since 2009. Warner is a former governor and current vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee. He had a massive cash advantage and scared off well-known Republicans from running against him.

For years, redistricting reform advocates have been arguing something should be done to curb Virginia’s long history of political gerrymandering.

On Tuesday, voters overwhelmingly agreed, passing a constitutional amendment that largely strips the General Assembly of its authority to redraw legislative and congressional districts, a historic shift in a system that dates back to Virginia’s colonial beginnings.

Wielding that power instead will be a 16-member, bipartisan redistricting commission made up of both sitting lawmakers and citizens, a panel designed to conduct its business publicly as opposed to the secretive, insider-driven processes of the past.

In a year of intense partisan division, the idea of depoliticizing the redistricting process seemed to draw broad support across parties and regions. With almost 90 percent of expected votes counted early Wednesday morning, about 67 percent of Virginians had voted in favor of the amendment.

Though some votes were still uncounted, FairMapsVA, the anti-gerrymandering group pushing for the amendment with its parent organization OneVirginia2021, declared victory around 12:40 a.m., saying the result came after six years of work.

“Tonight, we celebrate the formation of Virginia’s first citizen-led redistricting commission; and tomorrow, we get back to work to ensure the commission’s work is successful,” the group said in a statement.

The outcome ensures that the next redistricting process — which could determine how much representation Virginia communities have, which political party is likely to hold power in Richmond and which incumbents are or aren’t safe from election challenges — will have at least some direct citizen involvement for the first time ever.

Once a decade, the state uses new U.S. Census data to redraw legislative and congressional maps to ensure each district has roughly the same population. How those districts are drawn can have far-reaching impacts, affecting which party can win a majority of the seats, electoral competitiveness, how much political power minority communities have and which individual politicians get to represent a particular area. So it’s no surprise that changing who draws those maps was a contentious endeavor.

The vote on the redistricting question, coupled with strong Democratic victories in Tuesday’s statewide races, reveals a disconnect between some Democratic leaders and the party’s voters.

Many Democrats in the House of Delegates voted against the commission proposal this year after voting for it in 2019, a reversal they said came after they had more time to consider its flaws. The Democratic Party of Virginia also officially opposed the initiative despite the fact that it was supported by senior Virginia Democrats like U.S. Sens. Tim Kaine and Mark Warner. Had the amendment failed, the Democratic-led General Assembly and Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam would have the final say on new maps.

Fair Districts VA, an advocacy group formed by Democrats opposed to the ballot question, conceded defeat early Wednesday morning, saying it had been “fighting an uphill battle.” The group demanded that more be done to pursue stronger redistricting reform going forward.

“The people who pushed Amendment 1 know of its flaws – and it is now incumbent upon them to seek real solutions to fix those flaws,” Fair Districts said in a news release.

The proposal was supported by national good-government groups as well as the ACLU of Virginia, the League of Women Voters of Virginia and the Virginia Chamber of Commerce. But it fell short of what many redistricting reformers envisioned: a fully independent commission that gives incumbent politicians no power whatsoever to draw their own districts.

Because Virginia has no process for citizen-initiated constitutional amendments, it’s always been up to state lawmakers to willingly give up their redistricting power. In previous years, the Republican-led House of Delegates routinely blocked redistricting reform efforts. But GOP leaders changed their position in 2019 after federal courts redrew some House districts to correct Republican-led racial gerrymandering, a development that helped put the House GOP majority in jeopardy heading into the 2019 elections.

Reserving half the seats for legislators was seen as a compromise that still gives General Assembly leaders a hand in redistricting, which can have career-ending consequences for incumbents whose districts change dramatically.

Maps produced by the new commission will go to the General Assembly for an up-or-down vote. If the commission can’t agree on maps or the General Assembly rejects the commission’s maps, the Supreme Court of Virginia would conduct a court-supervised redistricting process.

Opponents have also argued the commission proposal lacks explicit protections for minority communities. Supporters say the amendment achieves that by referencing the federal Voting Rights Act and specifying that districts will allow “opportunities for racial and ethnic communities to elect candidates of their choice.”

The insidery arguments about the commission’s particulars seemed to escape many Virginians.

Some voters said they hadn’t heard about the redistricting amendment until they saw it on their ballot Tuesday, drawing disparate conclusions about its potential impact from the one-paragraph description they read in the voting booth.

At a polling place in downtown Richmond, none sounded especially confident in their interpretations.

“It’s so convoluted if you read it from the back of a voter ballot,” said Patrick Ogden, who ultimately decided to vote no because he opposed the idea of stripping the governor of his authority to veto redistricting plans and giving the unelected members of the Supreme Court of Virginia a role in the process. “I believe the governor should have a little more say. At least that’s what I read from it.”

Sasha Atkins, who also voted no, said the explanation on the ballot made her worry the amendment wouldn’t give regular citizens enough of a say in the redistricting process. “We should be representing ourselves,” she said.

Another voter at the same polling place said she voted for the measure, but only because she thought it addressed how local school districts redraw their boundaries.

In Southwest Virginia’s Franklin County, Gary Holden of Ferrum said he supported the commission while voting “straight-ticket Democrat.” He said he saw the commission as preferable to the current system “so long as it’s made up of equal parties.”

In Virginia Beach, 44-year-old schoolteacher Scott Parker said he voted for the redistricting amendment because he wanted to bring more logic to the process.

At the same polling place, Janise Jenkins, a 39-year-old property manager, also said the amendment would be an improvement on the status quo.

“It will be fair, more reasonable,” she said.

The commission was approved just in time to handle the redistricting process scheduled for 2021, but pandemic-related delays with the census data could create severe timing issues. With all 100 seats in the House of Delegates up for election next year, officials will have to rush to get new districts in place in time for late-summer primaries and a shortened general-election cycle.

If the delays make it impossible to draw new districts in time, the House elections could potentially be run using existing district lines. The state could also be left scrambling if there appear to be major problems with the census count conducted in such a chaotic year.

In the short term, officials will get to work setting up the commission and deciding who will serve on it. By Nov. 15, the state Supreme Court is supposed to submit a list of retired judges willing to serve on a selection committee that will pick the citizen members from nominees floated by General Assembly leaders. The commission’s eight legislative members are scheduled to be appointed by Dec. 1.

The commission has to hold its first public meeting by Feb. 1.

First, the General Assembly will reconvene to pass additional rules for how the commission will work. Those rules were being considered for inclusion in the state budget during the recent special session, but the fierce intraparty debate among Democrats over the amendment led lawmakers to keep the budget process open until after the outcome was known.

With the amendment approved by voters, the legislature is set to return next week to finish that work.

Vice President Joe Biden and U.S. Sen. Mark Warner were quickly declared victors Tuesday in Virginia, but the task of counting an extraordinary amount of absentee ballots left several other contests unresolved early Wednesday morning.

Minutes after the polls closed at 7 p.m., the Associated Press said Warner had defeated Republican challenger Daniel Gade. The AP later called the presidential contest for Biden, giving him Virginia’s 13 Electoral College votes if unofficial results hold.

But several competitive congressional races were uncalled as Tuesday turned to Wednesday, with results watchers waiting for local election officials to report their early voting numbers.

The 2.7 million votes cast by mail or in person prior to Election Day muddled the results that appeared Tuesday evening, showing Republican candidates with strong leads in a state predicted to stay solidly Democratic.

Biden pulled ahead of Trump in Virginia shortly after midnight, as more votes from heavily Democratic areas, including populous Fairfax County, started to come in.

Similarly confusing situations played out in some of the congressional races considered most competitive, with the AP unable to call the contests.

In two of those races, first-term Democratic Reps. Abigail Spanberger, D-Henrico and Elaine Luria, D-Norfolk, were trying to hold off challenges from Del. Nick Freitas, R-Culpeper, and former Congressman Scott Taylor, respectively.

In the third, Democrat Cameron Webb conceded defeat to GOP candidate Bob Good, who beat incumbent Rep. Denver Riggleman, R-Nelson, in a primary this summer.

It wasn’t clear when the outcomes of the other races might be known, but officials will still be counting some late-arriving ballots that come in before noon Friday. Final numbers likely won’t be available until then.

First-term Rep. Jennifer Wexton, D-Leesburg, also defeated Republican challenger Aliscia Andrews, according to the AP, and other congressional incumbents appeared headed to re-election with no surprises.

In a hotly contested ballot referendum, voters appeared to signal broad approval for a constructional amendment to largely strip the General Assembly of its authority to redraw legislative and congressional districts. The amendment would create a 16-member, bipartisan commission that would redraw the state’s political maps starting with the 2021 redistricting process. Early results showed about 66 percent of voters supporting the amendment, with about 3/4 of the expected vote counted.

Voters in four cities also approved local referendums allowing casinos to be built in Bristol, Portsmouth, Danville and Norfolk, giving final approval to a casino legalization push years in the making.

Officials said Election Day went smoothly, with few reported problems.

As voters across the state cast their ballots, several said they were feeling uncertain about what might follow a uniquely important election.

Vonda Wharam, a 54-year-old teacher from Buckingham County, declined to say how she voted but said she’s never felt so uneasy about a presidential contest.

“If Trump wins it’s gonna be a riot. If Biden wins they’re gonna fuss about if the election was valid and true,” Wharam said. “That worries me.”

Jason Conway, a 24-year-old Buckingham voter studying for a job working on power lines, agreed, said he voted for Biden and Webb but was motivated mainly by wanting to get rid of Trump.

“I see the Republican party pushing this line of love your country and God and whatever whatever,” Conway said outside the polling place set up at the Buckingham County Volunteer Rescue Squad building. “I think it’s more of an emotion-based reaction versus trying to actually get equality for everyone.”

In Southwest Virginia, Franklin County resident Steve Thompson said he voted “straight Republican.”

“The Democrats are scaring me,” Thompson said. “I think they’re just too radical. They’re going to end up trying to take too many of our rights away from us, or attempt to.”

Marlene St. Clair of Ferrum said she voted for Good in the 5th District race, largely because of his alignment with Trump. “I think he’ll follow through with the things that Trump wants to do,” she said. “He won’t stand in the way of it.”

In Virginia Beach, voters were deciding a rematch between Taylor and Luria, who ran against each other before in 2018.

Janise Jenkins, a 39-year-old property manager, said she felt Luria was the better pick for military families.

“I didn’t like the controversy over Scott,” she said, referring to the investigation into the 2018 Taylor campaign’s efforts to get a third-party candidate on the ballot. Two former Taylor campaign staffers pleaded guilty to election fraud charges after evidence emerged showing some of the petition signatures were forged. Taylor has insisted he wasn’t involved.

Shawn Williams, a 31-year-old truck driver, said he voted for Taylor after supporting Luria in 2018.

“The Democrats are pushing me away,” he said.

Taylor himself was working the crowd at Aragona Precinct, one of Virginia Beach’s largest polling places. Asked what he’d do if he lost, Taylor said: “Win or lose, I’m going to a beach somewhere.”

At the same polling place, Vicki Farrell, 65, felt so strongly about the prospect of post-election unrest she put a sign in her car window with a plea to any voter who saw it.

It said: “Whoever wins stay calm. ‘We are not enemies but friends.’ – Abraham Lincoln”

All of Virginia’s U.S. House seats were up for re-election, as well as one critical U.S. Senate seat. Virginia also voted on whether or not to create a commission to re-draw lines of congressional districts.

In District 8, Donald Beyer, Jr., the Democratic incumbent, is the projected winner according to the Associated Press. Beyer has held this office since 2015.

At the headquarters of the Fauquier County Republican Committee in Warrenton, Virginia, a cardboard cutout of John Wayne gripping a rifle leans against a wall. Chair Gregory Schumacher says Wayne was “the great American Western hero,” and he says Republicans who held the Fifth District in Congress for all but two of the last 20 years will keep it in their hands this November.

Although the populous counties of Northern Virginia have powered the state’s drift into Democratic control, Schumacher says he sits on the political boundary. “When you come out from the Beltway, Fauquier County’s the first one that goes red,” Schumacher said.

But there are signs that this year could be different as Republican contender Bob Good faces Democratic challenger Cameron Webb in what political prediction site FiveThirtyEight calls the most competitive House race in the country. Webb has outraised Good fourfold and held a slight lead in the last three polls. Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia and The Cook Political Report call the congressional race a toss-up. If Democrats can win this seat, they will continue a blue wave that flipped three House seats in 2018.

Fatally flawed or a ‘step in the right direction’?

By Bob Lewis

A lot of people worked decades for this: taking decennial reapportionment of Virginia’s legislative districts from the self-serving hands of partisan lawmakers, at least in part, and giving the job to a new commission.

Finally, they believed, voters could soon pick their representatives instead of the other way around. And they were close, they believed. So close.

Led mostly by Democrats who had been in the legislative minority since the end of the 20th century, redistricting reform advocates believed their moment was at hand in the 2019 General Assembly. A commission had found traction at a transitional legislative moment with a clearly ascendant Democratic Party on the cusp of seizing control and Republicans, fearing that very prospect, welcoming a new commission that would spare them from the gerrymandering in the 2021 redistricting that they had inflicted upon Democrats in 2001 and 2011.

But the good-government group that had pushed the state constitutional amendment was about to learn a hard lesson in transactional politics. When push comes to shove and their power is threatened, politicians will work across party lines to preserve their prerogatives. That’s why Proposed Constitutional Amendment 1 now on every Virginia ballot feels like it falls short of the mark for some.

First, however, some background.

The state Constitution gives sole authority to apportion Virginia’s 100 House of Delegates districts, its 40 state Senate districts and its 11 U.S. House districts to the General Assembly and, by extension, the party in charge. The work of reapportionment begins again in earnest in less than three months.

The U.S. Constitution compels every state to perform this exercise in demography and geography each year immediately following the Census to ensure that each U.S. House member represents roughly the same number of constituents in Congress. Virginia’s Constitution requires compact and contiguous districts of the same population, meaning that, to the greatest degree practical, boundaries should not split communities of interest such as neighborhoods or voting precincts. For generations, dominant parties have trashed those precepts with impunity to maximize the number of districts favorable to their candidates and minimize those favoring their rivals.

It’s called gerrymandering, a practice nearly as old as the republic. Advances in digital information and computer analysis allow legislators to marry election data with fresh, granular Census data to engineer bespoke and often meandering districts, cherry-picking constituencies with microscopic precision to achieve partisan performance objectives.

Partisan gerrymandering, though vexing to the party out of power, is legal, the U.S. Supreme Court has held. It turns illegal when gerrymandering is racial in nature, concentrating Black voters into the fewest possible districts and minimizing their opportunities to elect candidates of their choice. Sometimes, racial gerrymandering — intentional or not — is inherent in achieving a partisan goal.

In the 2001 redistricting, a Republican-led legislature sketched a serpentine congressional district that took in as many Democrat-friendly precincts with African American populations as high as possible. It crept its way from Hampton Roads through select Peninsula precincts — at one point no wider than a bridge where it crossed a creek — before coiling itself around part of Richmond at its westernmost terminus. Crafting that Democratic super-district for Democratic Rep. Bobby Scott, then the only Black member of Virginia’s congressional delegation, produced several adjacent congressional districts tailored for Republicans.

Federal courts have intervened to rectify egregiously gerrymandered Virginia constructs, including last year when judges redrew lines for 26 House of Delegates districts after finding that the Republican-controlled 2011 reapportionment shoe-horned too many Black voters into too few state House districts, much the way Scott’s district was drawn 10 years earlier. Republicans appealed the lower-court map that created six new Democratic majority districts all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, where they lost a 5-4 decision.

At the start of 2019, optimism was strong that, at last, the Virginia Constitution would be amended to give an all-citizen panel ultimate say on divvying up districts without regard to partisan aims. It explicitly prohibited segregating communities of color into a few districts to leave more White (and presumably more conservative) voters in other districts.

No plan that cut legislators out of picking their constituents was likely to live long once in the hands of legislators. The original plan was gutted and replaced with what appears now on every Virginia ballot. It would establish a 16-member panel, half of them legislators with four each from the House and Senate and equal numbers of Democrats and Republicans from each chamber. The other eight would be citizen members selected by retired judges from lists prepared by legislators.

It’s a legislative move that Del. Lashrecse Aird, D-Petersburg and a leading advocate against the amendment, called “the ultimate okey doke.”

“Although it is a commission and although it is half legislators and half citizens, at the core of the matter, legislators are ultimately picking the entire commission and controlling the entire process,” Aird said. “It’s not independent by any means.

“There is nothing in this amendment that says we should make sure it is racially and ethnically balanced, that it is geographically balanced, that it is gender balanced. There is no language whatsoever to make sure that the makeup of this commission is representative of the commonwealth, and particularly of Black and Brown representation,” she said.

The commission also has a potential pitfall. Supermajority requirements could make it tough for the commission to agree on new district lines. Dissent from just two legislative members of the same chamber and same party would derail the commission’s work and put the Virginia Supreme Court in charge of drawing the lines.

Aird and members of the Legislative Black Caucus voiced their concerns, yet the resolution won easy bipartisan passage with overwhelming Democratic backing in 2019 — the first of two enactments in years separated by a legislative election required for amendments to the state Constitution.

After last fall’s election gave Democrats legislative majorities — and the power to dictate redistricting for the first time since 1991 — their intraparty rift over Amendment 1 widened. This year, just nine House Democrats supported the amendment, joining 45 Republican delegates to narrowly secure the required second enactment and send the amendment to voters.

Now, with 2.2 million Virginians having already voted, Virginia Democrats present the conflicted and chaotic spectacle of party elders such as Sens. Mark Warner and Tim Kaine and U.S. Rep. Don Beyer endorsing Amendment 1 while the Democratic Party of Virginia campaigns to kill it.

Democrats also passed a new law that contains the explicit protections against racial and other forms of gerrymandering that were in earlier versions of amendment legislation. However, it would be up to the courts to hold lawmakers accountable for following that criteria, something they haven’t done in the past with compactness, for example.

A.E. Dick Howard, the University of Virginia law professor who superintended the state Constitution’s 1971 rewrite, says he shares some of Aird’s concerns and her preference for a fully independent commission.

“That would have been cleaner. It would have been a more effective way to prevent gerrymandering,” he said. But he said he will support the ballot amendment because “it’s an important step in the right direction.”

Howard said that while the text of Amendment 1 does not explicitly call out racial gerrymandering, it contains clear prohibitions against it.

“It does say that the districts are to be drawn in accordance with the 14th Amendment and the Voting Rights Act of 1965,” Howard said.

Another essential improvement under Amendment 1 is transparency for a process historically done in strict secrecy behind locked doors, limited to only a handful of power brokers. The amendment would guarantee public access to commission meetings and records, he noted.

So seven days and a wakeup before voting on the amendment ends, the Democrats’ dilemma boils down to this: did they come this far and get so close to fall short, or will they make the perfect the enemy of the good?

The group for it is called Fair Maps VA.

The group against it is called Fair Districts VA.

Both say they’re working to end gerrymandering, and both say it’s the other guys who want to keep it around. They both use the same anti-gerrymandering talking points, like “Voters should choose their representatives, not the other way around.”

The Democratic Party of Virginia is officially against it. But two of its top figures, U.S. Sens. Mark Warner and Tim Kaine, voted for it on their own ballots already. It passed out of a Democratic-controlled General Assembly this year, but Republican leaders and conservative groups are urging their voters to support it.

Against that confusing backdrop, it’s understandable that many Virginia voters, particularly Democrats who for years have heard their party leaders talk up the urgent need for redistricting reform, don’t know what to make of ballot question 1. It asks if the state should create a 16-member, bipartisan redistricting commission to redraw Virginia’s congressional and legislative maps every decade starting in 2021 as new census data comes in.

For years, those who wanted to see redistricting power taken away from the General Assembly pushed for an independent, non-partisan commission, envisioned as a group of citizens who would draw fairer lines than self-interested politicians looking to juice their party’s numbers or protect their own seats.

The proposed constitutional amendment on the ballot this year doesn’t do that, giving half the commission seats to sitting legislators and half to citizens nominated by legislators and appointed by retired judges.

That’s one of the main shortcomings some Democratic lawmakers are highlighting to argue the plan wouldn’t really reform anything, instead allowing a smaller group of politicians and the politically connected to wield redistricting power. Rather than putting a flawed plan in the Constitution and maybe improving it in time for 2031, they say, it’s better to take the time to get it right.

“People across the board that think it ought to be a citizen-led process should all vote no on this,” said Del. Marcus Simon, D-Fairfax. “The amendment moves us in a direction that cements legislator involvement.”

That argument has been maddening for amendment supporters. If those insisting they want true independence from the General Assembly get their wish and the amendment is defeated, supporters point out, the General Assembly keeps its constitutional power to draw maps. That means no independence for the 2021 process, but a general promise to do something for 2031.

“Gerrymandering is cemented into the system now. Who do you think controls this?” said Brian Cannon, executive director of redistricting reform group OneVirginia2021. “It’s a false understanding of the status quo at best.”

That point is reinforced by the state’s official text explaining the amendment to voters, which says a no vote “will leave the sole responsibility for drawing the districts with the General Assembly and the governor.” Opponents have quibbled with that explanation. But it’s legally required to be both neutral and factual, and the Supreme Court of Virginia refused to hear a challenge claiming it isn’t.

Some redistricting reformers say they’d like to see something similar to the California Citizens Redistricting Commission, 14-member, all-citizen panel made up of five Democrats, five Republicans and four people with no partisan affiliation. California’s application process is overseen by the state auditor, but partisan leaders have an opportunity to strike applicants they find objectionable.

Regardless of where legislators stand on how much independence from partisan players a good commission needs, there wasn’t enough support in the General Assembly to make a fully independent commission feasible for 2021.

The compromise plan that emerged was the product of a unique political moment, with control of the General Assembly up for grabs in 2019, when Republicans and Democrats weren’t sure which party was going to be in charge for the redistricting year.

Though some opponents have characterized the amendment as a scheme hatched by Republicans, the proposal for a commission with an equal number of legislators and citizens was introduced in early 2019 by Senate Democrats. That resolution became the amendment that passed a Republican-controlled legislature in 2019 and a Democratic-led one in 2020, despite the partisan power shift in between. Under Virginia’s system, it had to pass two years in a row before going to voters for a final up-or-down decision.

After passing with overwhelming bipartisan support in 2019 despite objections from about a dozen members of the Virginia Legislative Black Caucus in the House, the amendment was almost blocked in 2020 as House Democrats abandoned it in droves. Nine House Democrats joined with 45 Republicans to pass it 54-46.

If Democrats had chosen to scrap the amendment this year and start over, it would’ve killed any chance for constitutional changes in time for the 2021 process.

Several senior lawmakers said allowing some legislative role was critical to drafting something with broad, bipartisan support, the idea being that elected officials are more familiar with how redistricting works and the geography of the areas they represent.

“If you just had straight citizens, who’s to say how that’s going to turn out?” said Senate Majority Leader Dick Saslaw, D-Fairfax, who supports the amendment and called arguments against it “pure bullsh**t” during the 2020 regular legislative session. “We did not put a provision in the bill, which some of the legislators wanted, that incumbency would be taken into effect.”

Under Republican control, the Senate passed several redistricting reform plans that routinely failed in the House. That changed in 2019, after a federal court ruled 11 majority-minority districts drawn in the Republican-led, 2011 redistricting had been unconstitutionally racially gerrymandered. That ended with the court redrawing the maps for the 2019 elections, signaling that Republicans were in serious jeopardy of losing their majority.

In an interview, Del. Kirk Cox, R-Colonial Heights, the House speaker in 2019, said that seeing a court-appointed expert from California redraw his district and others changed his thinking on redistricting reform. But he still felt legislators should be involved.

“They know the process,” Cox said. “It’s almost like having a commission that deals with police reform, a citizen commission, and not having anyone who’s actually been in a squad car or ever done it.”

The amendment’s critics say the bipartisan history of gerrymandering shows why they’re pushing for a stronger break from how things have been done in the past.

“To me, if you drew a map that they threw out as unconstitutional against Black people, you maybe shouldn’t be invited back to that table,” said Del. Marcia Price, D-Newport News.

During the 2020 session, Price pushed for an alternative, non-binding commission that would have included more prominent protections for minority communities. But she was forced to amend her proposal to include seats for legislators, commenting at the time that she was told she “did not have the votes” for a commission that banned legislators.

Her bill ultimately failed to pass, but many of the House Democrats now saying they can only support a truly independent commission voted for it, even with the seats for legislators added.

Simon acknowledged that a fully independent commission was a tough sell.

“It was impossible in 2019 because Republicans don’t believe in it,” he said. “It became really difficult to do in 2020 because Democrats in the Senate were wedded to their commission they had come up with.”

Others see a simple explanation for why some House Democrats are reluctant to vote for something that would force them to give up their power: They see a chance to use their hard-won majority to draw maps in their interest just like Republicans did in 2011.

“Once you come to that conclusion, you have to come up with some reasons why you’re opposed,” said Cox.

Other arguments against the amendment have centered on the perceived lack of attention to diversity and racial representation, as well as the potential role for the conservative-leaning Supreme Court of Virginia. Critics have suggested that, since either party can deadlock the commission and send the map-drawing process to the Supreme Court, Republicans might choose to take their chances with judges appointed under Republican legislatures.

Supporters have dismissed those concerns as overblown, noting the Supreme Court has recently upheld Democratic positions on major issues like a gun ban at the state Capitol and Gov. Ralph Northam’s COVID-19 shutdown orders. They also point out that the new proposed process will be public, unlike current redistricting, in which lawmakers hash out district lines behind closed doors.

Some Democrats claim they’ve already solved partisan gerrymandering by passing redistricting criteria legislation that says the statewide maps cannot “unduly favor or disfavor any political party.” But alleged violations of that broad standard may be difficult to prove or disprove, and would most likely require a ruling from the state Supreme Court, which tends to defer to legislative authority where laws are vague or ill-defined.

The amendment has been endorsed by numerous newspaper editorial pages, civic organizations and national good-government groups, including the League of Women Voters, the ACLU of Virginia, Common Cause, the Virginia Chamber of Commerce, the Princeton Gerrymandering Project and the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School.

“This is the best the Democrats could do in Virginia,” David Daley, a gerrymandering expert and author of the book “Ratf**ked: Why Your Vote Doesn’t Count,” said at a recent press event with redistricting reform supporters. “And if we’re going to have a process in Virginia in 2020 in which citizens have any seat at the table, this is the way to do it. If this does not happen, the Democrats will have complete control of the process.”

The amendment’s most prominent opponents include the Democratic Party of Virginia (which is officially urging Democrats to vote no on sample ballots and other literature), the Virginia conference of the NAACP and progressive advocacy groups like Progress Virginia and New Virginia Majority.

A recent poll conducted by Christopher Newport University’s Wason Center for Public Policy found significant public support for the amendment, with 48 percent of voters in favor, 28 percent opposed and 24 percent undecided.

Though some party leaders have flipped their positions on redistricting reform, the poll suggested rank-and-file voters may not be getting the message. It found 64 percent of likely Democratic voters in favor of the amendment, and Republicans more likely to oppose it.

Still, support for the amendment was weaker than what prior polls on redistricting reform have shown.

“Virginians are learning that Amendment 1 is not independent, nor is it non-partisan,” Del. Lashrecse Aird, D-Petersburg, said in a statement released by anti-amendment group Fair Districts VA.

Amendment supporters are cautiously optimistic that it will pass. Del. Sally Hudson, D-Charlottesville, a progressive, first-term lawmaker who was one of the nine House Democrats to vote for the amendment, said that’s what makes opposition a “safe play for progressives” who “get to say they were holding out for better without being on the hook if it fails.”

“If this amendment passes there will be nowhere to hide in the next round of reform,” Hudson said. “The only step forward will be full independence. Because that’s what’s hard about the politics right now. People who want more reform and people who want none can come together to oppose the amendment. But they can’t come together on an alternative.”

Voting in Virginia was already changing even before COVID-19 arrived.

The combination of a global pandemic and some major shifts in state election laws — ushered in after Democrats took control of the General Assembly — means that when Virginians cast their ballots this year, they can expect things to be a little different.

Here’s what you need to know to make sure your vote counts in November.

When is the election and what’s on the ballot?

The election is Nov. 3.

In addition to the main event — the matchup between President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden — U.S. Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., is facing off against Republican challenger Daniel Gade and all 11 of Virginia’s seats in the U.S. House of Representatives are on the ballot.

Voters will also be asked to weigh in on a statewide referendum to create a bipartisan redistricting commission that, if approved, would redraw the state’s political maps every 10 years using new U.S. census data. Another state referendum question proposes to create a motor vehicle tax exemption for disabled military veterans.

There are numerous other local races and issues on the ballot depending on where you live, including a special election for vacant House of Delegates seat in the Winchester area and casino referendums in several cities.

Absentee voting 

Early voting, which just got easier due to a change in state law that allows anyone to cast an absentee ballot without needing an excuse, began Sept. 18.

Officials are already seeing big spikes in absentee ballot requests as people seek safe alternatives allowing them to avoid any Election Day crowds, and asking voters to submit their ballot requests early to avoid any issues with a last-minute surge.

You can request an absentee ballot through the state’s online application system.  If you’re not sure if you’re registered to vote, you can check your status here.

What are my options?

All polling places will be open on Election Day with social distancing protocols in place, so anyone who wants to go through the typical in-person voting process can do so. As usual, polls will be open from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m., and anyone in line at 7 p.m. will be allowed to vote. You can look up your polling place here.

If you choose to get an absentee ballot through the mail, there are multiple ways to return it.

You can mail it back using the provided envelope, which will include prepaid postage and a tracking code allowing you to keep tabs on your ballot through an online system called Ballot Scout.

Or you can take the ballot back yourself, dropping it off with an employee at your local election office or at one of the drop boxes the General Assembly recently approved.

If you don’t want to rely on the mail but still want to cast your ballot early, in-person absentee voting is going on now at your local elections office and satellite voting offices. You don’t have to fill out an application to cast an absentee ballot in person, you just have to verify your identity when you go.

There are some limitations on mail-in absentee ballots if it’s your first time voting in a particular locality and you registered to vote by mail. There are exemptions for people who might face particular difficulty voting in person, such as college students, military personnel and their spouses, the elderly and people with illnesses or disabilities. If it’s your first time voting in your city or county and you want to vote by mail, check with your local registrar to verify your eligibility.

What are the key deadlines?

The deadline to register to vote in November is Oct. 13.

The deadline to request an absentee ballot through the mail is Oct. 23.

The deadline to vote absentee in person is Oct. 31.

If I vote by mail, will my ballot arrive in time?

There can be complications if you wait until the last minute to mail your ballot back, and that’s a heightened concern for many this year due to slowdowns with the U.S. Postal Service.

If you want a mail-in ballot, the Postal Service recommends requesting one as early as possible and mailing it back before Election Day, preferably at least a week in advance.

In Virginia, election officials will count ballots that come in a few days after the polls close, as long as they’re postmarked by 7 p.m. on Election Day. Ballots received after noon on Nov. 6 will not be counted. Ballots with a missing or illegible postmark will be counted as long as they come in before the deadline.

Do I still need an ID to vote?

A change to state law this year means photo IDs are no longer strictly required. But if you have one, you should still bring it to streamline the process. Anyone who doesn’t have an ID can get a regular ballot, but only after they sign a statement affirming they are who they say they are.

Anyone who doesn’t have an ID and refuses to sign the statement can cast a provisional ballot, which will be set aside until election officials can determine whether the person is or isn’t a valid voter.

Other changes to state law expanded the types of identification documents that will be accepted, allowing voters to use expired driver’s licenses, bank statements, utility bills and paychecks to verify their identity. College students will also be able to use any higher education ID, regardless of whether it includes a photo or was issued by a non-Virginia school.

A complete list of acceptable IDs is available here.

In the wee hours of an unseasonably balmy, humid Sunday in mid-March, legislative staff on the ninth and 10th floors of Capitol Square’s decrepit, old General Assembly Building had opened their windows wide to mitigate the swelter from unrelenting, clanking steam radiators. Beyond exhaustion from a week of late nights, many hours of work lay ahead for them.

Those top floors were rarefied real estate, home to the most powerful committees in state government — those with the final say over how the state spends tens of billions of dollars — and the expert staffs who did the heavy lifting. And on this last long night, days behind schedule and hours past the 2010 legislature’s scheduled final adjournment, a dozen delegates and senators cloistered behind closed doors, bickering and dickering over the fine print of what would be the $77 billion state government spending blueprint through June 2012.

It’s known as the budget conference, an innocuous-sounding insider term that means little or nothing to ordinary Virginians. But the agreement that rival House and Senate members sealed with a handshake around 2 a.m. on that warm, late-winter Sunday — and at the conclusion of budget conferences every year — was highly consequential to their daily lives from the taxes they pay to funding for their kids’ schools and everything in between. It’s no less true in the current special session as House and Senate budget negotiators try to square differing versions of a pandemic-ravaged proposed budget of $137 billion, 77 percent larger than that budget adopted 10 years earlier.

No other piece of legislation holds as much sway as state budget bills, which not only form the 24-month financial framework for the commonwealth but also supersedes other state law. That such critical legislating is done at the last minute in sometimes chaotic, often contentious late-night sessions well out of public view by sleep-starved people amid the intermingled odors of cold pizza and burned coffee did not — and should not — inspire confidence.

Nobody has seen the budget conference process from more different perspectives than Bill Leighty, an immensely accomplished senior state government veteran who cut his teeth in the 1980s with a seven-year stint on the Senate Finance Committee staff. From there, Leighty would direct the sprawling Virginia Retirement System before serving as chief of staff to two successive governors, Mark Warner and Tim Kaine.

“What makes them (budget conferences) so powerful is that what they agree on and put in the conference report goes directly to the floor and can only be voted up or down — no amendments,” said Leighty, now retired and an adviser to the L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs at Virginia Commonwealth University. “And, because they’re presented so late, everyone is loath to send it back to conference for a redo.”

How late? In 2010, the committee staffs had only 15 hours that Sunday to write the budget conferees’ agreement into its final form and have printed copies on all 140 legislators’ desks for that up-or-down floor vote, leaving them barely enough time to go home, change clothes and return to Capitol Square. The House and Senate convened at 5 p.m., agreed to the conferees’ work and adjourned sine die before 6.

That’s the lawmaking equivalent of driving down a twisting, one-lane mountain road on a moonless night with one working headlight and brakes that didn’t pass inspection. Yet somehow, mainly through the exacting work of highly professional staffs fighting off sleep with energy drinks and raw adrenalin, it has never jumped the guardrails and tumbled into the abyss.

Budget conferences don’t always bust their deadlines, and it’s not as though there aren’t weighty issues at play when they do. In 2010, like this year, the state was in the grips of a monstrous economic collapse that ravaged the official revenue estimates on which the budget is built. Both years forced significant cuts in state operating outlays.

In 2004, during a battle over reforms Warner proposed to fix what he called a structural imbalance in the state budget (Republicans labeled it a tax increase, and they weren’t wrong), the House and Senate deferred passage of a budget to an April special session. In the end, Warner got most of what he wanted from a GOP House and Senate through the budget bill.

Leighty recalls that budget battle as significant because of its use of the “repealer clause,” a provision in the budget that trumps statutory law. He said he authored dozens of them over his years on the Finance Committee and said the clauses can be spotted in any budget bill by looking for sections that begin with the words “Notwithstanding any other provision of law… .”

“We put all the tax changes in the (2004) budget bill so that it overrode tax law,” he said.

Opacity and even occasional sleight-of-hand is an old tradition of budget conferences. Reporters and their voice on Capitol Square — the Virginia Capitol Correspondents Association — have stormed and huffed about it many times over the decades (including two years when this writer was its president) to no avail.

Over the decades, conferees have gone to bizarre, almost zany lengths to shield the byzantine proceedings from public view. In his years as a cub Finance Committee staffer, Leighty was assigned by the committee chairman, the late Sen. Ed Willey, to walk conspicuously past the cramped press filing room in the musty bowels of the Capitol with a boxload of budget documents and calculators, luring reporters in the opposite direction of where the conferees would actually meet.

“Ed Willey had one hard-and-fast rule: that the conference committee had to meet in a public building. So we picked some wonderful places: the Science Museum, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, the budget offices, the Old Finance Building,” he said.

In one such cat-and-mouse adventure in the 1980s, the conferees had covertly gathered in an empty room in the then-mothballed Old Finance Building (since renovated to its former splendor and renamed the Oliver Hill Building) that sits just down the hill from the Capitol and nextdoor to the Executive Mansion. The tactic worked, Leighty recalled, until Joe Gatins, a sharp-eyed reporter for the Richmond Times-Dispatch, spotted a single room with lights blazing in a darkened, derelict building.

“He went through the system of tunnels that connect the buildings on Capitol Square and popped up right in the middle of the conference committee,” Leighty said with a chuckle. “When he did, they scattered.”

What does the public miss in those closed cabals? It’s hard to say.

We know the items that are in conflict between the House and Senate budget bills, we know there is argument — sometimes loud enough to penetrate the closed doors — and we know there is compromise. The biggest disputes were not partisan but between House and Senate members battling over conflicting provisions in their rival budget bills. Their final resolution on those disagreements was usually pretty clear when it was over.

This week, that process starts anew, but possibly with a wrinkle. It’s not clear whether the budget conferees will gather socially distanced in person (doubtful considering that floor sessions have been conducted virtually) or via Zoom conference. And if it’s the latter, will the press (and public) be able to watch?

That’s a prospect that would have been unimaginable when Joe Gatins was sleuthing for stealthy conferees.

The story of how the former Confederacy capital turned blue is one of demographic shifts, a Democratic political machine and Donald Trump.

The story of how Virginia went blue in presidential years is one of demographic shifts, a Democratic political machine and Trump. It’s the story of how a state’s voting patterns can change – and how politicians know all too well that they can change back again.

“Virginia is a blue state”, said Stephen Farnsworth, a political science professor at the University of Mary Washington.

Virginia’s economy is, compared to elsewhere in the country, “recession resistant. That makes it an appealing place for people to move when they’re thinking about their futures,” Farnsworth explained. People move from all over the country – and indeed all over the world – to live and work in Virginia.

After controlling both chambers of the state legislature and the executive mansion for the first time in a generation, hundreds of new laws passed by the Democratic controlled Virginia General Assembly and signed by Governor Ralph Northam (D) take effect July 1.

Northam signed more than 1,200 bills that cleared the General Assembly during the 2020 session.

Many of those bills are duplicates, commending resolutions, or technical tweaks to existing law. Although many Virginians might not see or know the direct impact, several bills will directly impact daily life and discussion in Virginia.

“We’re excited about what’s going to happen and what will become law at midnight,” said Del. Jeff Bourne (D-Richmond). “We are putting Virginia on the right side of history. Although, we may be getting on the right side of history a little late for some things.”

Virginia Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine is preparing for battle with President Donald Trump over renaming military facilities that honor Confederates — and he’s expecting to win.

In an interview with the Mercury, Kaine said he believes the GOP-controlled Senate would override a possible presidential veto of a defense policy bill that would begin a process to rename the facilities. Doing so would require support from two-thirds of those voting.

Republicans hold 53 seats — or 53% — in the U.S. Senate. Democrats hold 233 seats — about 54% — in the U.S. House.

“I think we need to put it on his desk,” Kaine said. “If he were to veto this bill, I think we would override it.”

If the bill becomes law, it would be a major victory for the movement for racial justice and equality, which has intensified in recent months.

Suburban voters like Schmiegelow represent an existential challenge for Virginia Republicans, who haven’t won a statewide election since 2009. They’ve lost control of the executive mansion, the state legislature, and a majority of the state’s congressional seats.

The latest blow came last week when almost 1,300 bills passed by the new Democratic majority in the General Assembly went into effect. Republican laws on everything from abortion to voter ID were wiped off the book.

Part of the problem for Virginia Republicans is the president, according to Shaun Kenney, the former executive director of the Republican Party of Virginia.

“The suburbs just do not react well to Donald Trump in the White House,” Kenney said. “There’s just no way of getting around that.”