JAHD KHALIL: This year, Virginians are voting on whether to change the state's constitution.

I'm Jahd Khalil, VPMs state politics reporter, and I wanted to talk with the people who are for and against the four proposed constitutional amendments.

In this episode, we're talking about redistricting.

In July 2025, President Donald Trump launched a pressure campaign on Republican-controlled state legislatures.

He asked them to redraw congressional districts so their party would have an easier time maintaining control of Congress.

Virginia seemed out of the mix until Democrats here abruptly called lawmakers back to Richmond to start the legislative process of allowing Virginia to enter the nationwide redistricting campaign.

JAMES ABRENIO: Donald Trump put Virginia Democrats in a position to where they had to respond.

There is no other choice.

JAHD KHALIL: But opponents say Virginia's redistricting plan is bad for democracy.

BRIAN CANNON: If the Democrats do it, then the Republicans are going to want to do it, and vice, and we're going to be in this tit-for-tat internal war in Virginia over this, and we can just do better.

JAHD KHALIL: It's all led up to now when voters will have the final say on whether to redraw Virginia's congressional districts this year or not.

This is "Amending Virginia."

(upbeat music) JAHD KHALIL: The Democrats proposed amendment would give the legislature permission to draw new temporary districts for the House of Representatives earlier than usual.

Here's what Virginia's congressional map looks like now, and this is the proposal.

The current map is a 6-5 split favoring Democrats.

The new map could give Dems 10 out of 11 seats.

The amendment is written so that a redraw can only happen if another state has redone their congressional map for political purposes.

But the trigger has already been activated by Texas, California and other states.

The amendment is written with an expiration date, October 31, 2030.

I needed to ask someone how we ended up here and why this amendment matters on a bigger timeline.

So I met with Caroline Legros, who is the head of civics education at the Virginia Museum of History and Culture.

JAHD KHALIL: Why should people care about this amendment?

CAROLINE LEGROS: Redistricting has a really outsize impact on the way your voice is heard as a voter.

The way that it works is that in your district, your ballot will have your slate of candidates.

The candidates for your area should represent the population, the community that are within your district.

There was a requirement that the General Assembly and the governor determined how districts should be redrawn.

In 2020, a referendum was passed that meant that a board of commissioners essentially would make that decision on behalf of voters.

But that process got a little complicated.

That commission wasn't able to come to consensus, and so the state Supreme Court had to step in.

So this new proposed amendment is sort of revisiting this idea of how should these districts be drawn?

JAHD KHALIL: So that redistricting usually happens every 10 years.

CAROLINE LEGROS: That's right.

JAHD KHALIL: But sometimes districts get drawn in between those 10 years, right?

CAROLINE LEGROS: That's right.

JAHD KHALIL: And that's kind of what we're considering now.

CAROLINE LEGROS: So the 10-year redistricting cycle aligns with the census cycle so that as the census reassesses who is where, that then precipitates the shift in the way that district lines are being drawn.

In some instances, which we're, you know, seeing now as an example, there are political motivators to redraw districts in hopes of, you know, favoring one political party or another.

JAHD KHALIL: When you're talking about fairness when it comes to like civics education, what sort of threads do you pull when you're talking to students or teachers and things like that?

CAROLINE LEGROS: When you talk about civics, you're talking about the way that we, as members of a community, interact with one another.

And I think most people have a strong sense of what feels fair and what feels unfair.

You might feel a strong connection to your right to vote and its importance to your day-to-day life.

The idea of how your district is drawn may not occur to you, as a voter, as a key part of that right.

Is it fair for Virginia to consider redistricting based on a political motive?

That's a question I think every individual person has to think about and answer and will inform, presumably, their vote.

This is a decision that they get to weigh in on.

JAHD KHALIL: I kept hearing the word “fair” in this whole debate, and it sounds like it means something different to everyone.

Somebody who has thought a lot about this is James Abrenio.

He's an attorney in Northern Virginia and was on the Virginia Redistricting Commission in 2021, but he's no longer on the commission and says he supports the Democrats' redistricting effort.

We talked about why over a couple Americanos.

JAHD KHALIL: How would you describe your journey from being an independent redistricting commissioner to being someone who is in favor of this new redistricting amendment that would give that power back to the Legislature for a time?

JAMES ABRENIO: I am a fan, and I support either bipartisan or independent redistricting.

I think, frankly, every state needs to adopt it.

The reason that I have changed my view on what we should be doing in 2026 is because I see Donald Trump's efforts as a unique, once-in-history, unprecedented effort to use redistricting to protect himself in the midterms.

I don't even think he's trying to protect the Republicans.

And I think that we as Virginians have to send a message to Donald Trump and to any future president that wants to game the system like this: There will be political costs.

JAHD KHALIL: It sounds like you were kind of, you were conflicted about the decision a little bit to start.

Can you talk a little bit more about that sort of push and pull in your political thought?

JAMES ABRENIO: Sure, because, I mean, it's easy to look at the principle of gerrymandering and saying that is not good.

That is a stain on our political system.

It is a poison.

It is abused by both sides.

Both parties are guilty of gerrymandering.

Two wrongs don't make a right.

That's ultimately the argument for the "No" campaign, and frankly, for me, I had reservations.

But then there's this concept that we all are aware of of self-defense.

If you punch me in the face and I punch you back to defend myself, that is justified.

There is a legal justification for that.

That's really what we're doing is we're defending ourselves from Trump's attack on our democracy in the most cynical way possible by using our love for anti-gerrymandering against us.

JAHD KHALIL: What do you think fairness means in the context of this redistricting amendment debate?

JAMES ABRENIO: So it's easy to look at just Virginia, and just right now at this moment and ignore Trump, ignore the history and to say what the Democrats are doing right now is unfair.

When you actually look at what Trump has done, he's really given us only two alternatives.

And you have to ask the context of what is fair within those two alternatives.

Number one, we respond to him in order to deter this action and to take back the states that he's stolen.

Or we sit back, do nothing, and allow him to steal voices of Virginia Democrats.

And so how do I resolve what's fairer?

The basic concept of you have a right to defend yourself.

And that's all I'm asking that Virginians do is consider that.

We are changing the congressional map, or that's the goal.

Because when you look at Congress, you have to look at the entire puzzle of the United States.

So when Donald Trump steals five seats over here in Texas, steals a seat here in Missouri, steals a seat here and that puzzle piece in North Carolina, our simple goal is we're going to take those back here in Virginia.

We are just trying to level the playing field.

And the other thing about the narrowly tailored nature about what we're doing here is: It's a temporary amendment.

It only applies to the congressional maps.

And the only reason it is triggered is because Donald Trump has affirmatively ordered Republican states to steal seats to protect him in the midterms.

Do the research.

'Cause ultimately the underlying amendment is available.

The maps are available.

And unlike what Trump has done in Texas, North Carolina, Missouri — we actually have a referendum that goes to the voters.

Just like in California, the referendum went to the voters.

The voters have a chance to reject it.

If the voters here in Virginia end up rejecting this, I can live with that.

JAHD KHALIL: So those are the arguments to vote "Yes" for the amendment.

But there are arguments for voting "No," of course.

And I thought Brian Cannon was well-suited to talk about those.

He's most well known as a champion of the bipartisan redistricting commission.

He considers himself a Democrat, but he's been an outspoken critic of the current push to redraw maps.

We met in Midlothian for lunch.

You know, my understanding is that you kind of have a history in Democratic politics a little bit, but you're sort of on the other side of that of the issue than a lot of your kind of former party mates or whatever you want to call them.

Can you talk about, sort of, how it feels to be on the other side of the issue and why you're on the other side of the issue?

BRIAN CANNON: You know, I believe in voting rights, and I believe in your right to vote as much as mine, no matter whether you're voting for the same candidate I am or not.

So I think that's a kind of a baseline principle we all have to agree with in a democracy to be able to have what we have.

And gerrymandering robs people of that.

It makes, in this case, it'll make Republican votes matter significantly less.

It's going to rob rural voters of representation.

And so this isn't a hard concept for me from a moral standpoint of just, do we believe in voting rights for all or not?

And I do.

JAHD KHALIL: What do you think fairness means when it comes to, you know, this issue that we're talking about when it comes to the redistricting amendment?

BRIAN CANNON: We want to participate and encourage and have as many elections in Virginia that are free, fair and secure.

And a lot of times you hear Democrats talking about this gerrymandering, and they say, "I believe in free and fair elections, but..." And then they say we need to do this, right?

And I just think there needs to be no “but” there.

I think there needs to be a period there.

We believe in free and fair elections.

And youd have them.

So you have, you know, one side proposing a 10-1 map that would, you know, wipe out 40% of the, you know, the voters' real choices and real power in this election.

And they're calling it fair, and it's not.

There's no two ways about it.

It's not a fair thing.

And even on the national level, as a Democrat personally, like we don't need to cheat to win.

JAHD KHALIL: What do you mean by that?

"We don't need to cheat to win."

BRIAN CANNON: Yeah, gerrymandering's cheating.

And that's what the Democrats are proposing is to gerrymander Virginia in such a way that it rigs the outcome for Democrats.

Virginia has fair maps today.

We currently have a 6-5 Democratic majority in Congress.

If we just run good candidates and good campaigns, Democrats should be able to get to 8-3.

Now the gerrymander that's proposed would take us to 10-1, which completely wipes out Republicans and their voting power and respecting their voting rights instead of winning just a fair, you know, straight-up fair fight.

JAHD KHALIL: Texas has done a gerrymander to get more Republican seats.

Why shouldn't Virginia, you know, answer in kind?

BRIAN CANNON: You hear that a lot.

“Should we fight fire with fire?” And I think the real answer is we should fight fire with water and we should actually strengthen our democracy here, not erode it.

But in the bigger picture, you get the midterm, the average pickup for the party out of power is 25 seats.

And we don't have to gerrymander to get that.

We can just win free and fair.

JAHD KHALIL: One other thing that I think is always brought up is the temporary nature of the amendment.

What do you think about it only lasting three election cycles, right?

BRIAN CANNON: It's three cycles.

So the next time Virginia - if this amendment passes and Virginia's gerrymandered, the next time we will have fair congressional districts and be represented by those people is January of 2033.

That's a long way off from where we are today.

And what I hear from Barack Obama on the ads and things like that is that we have to fight back against Trump.

Well, Trump's got two more years left in office after this.

So if it were really temporary, it would end after the ‘28 cycle, but it's not, and it's going to last five more years beyond that.

But furthermore, I don't actually believe that the Democrats were going to want to stop here.

Or if the Republicans are back in power in Virginia, which the pendulum swings pretty quickly in today's politics, that the Republicans are going to want to not gerrymander either, right?

We need to rise above this, and if the Democrats do it, then the Republicans are going to want to do it and vice, and we're going to be in this tit-for-tat internal war in Virginia over this, and we can just do better.

JAHD KHALIL: Hundreds of thousands of people have already cast their ballots on the amendment since early voting started in March.

But lots of Virginians are still deciding.

James told me this is a matter of self-defense.

If someone tries to cancel out your vote, you have a right to fight back.

It's only fair.

For Brian, gerrymandering is wrong no matter what.

And he thinks Democrats are going to win more seats in Virginia in 2026, so they don't need to put their thumb on the scale.

Voters will decide by April 21 whether to redistrict or not.

Look for our next episode of "Amending Virginia" coming this summer.

Until then, visit VPM.org for all of our coverage related to redistricting.

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