Why did VA have to vote on restricting but TN didn’t?

Added: 2026-05-20

[00:00:00]Yes, I can. Ooh.

[00:00:02]>> [laughter] >> The lighting. The sun is coming in through a tree. We're just going to go with it. So, the Tennessee state law prohibited the General Assembly from redrawing their maps outside of a census year. So, usually it would be 2020 to 2030. The governor called a special session of the General Assembly and they passed a new law overturning that old one saying, "Hey, we can redraw whenever we want." And then that's what they did.

[00:00:23]Now, in Virginia, we have a constitutional amendment that says that our maps can only be drawn by a bipartisan redistricting commission, which is who does it now. In order to amend our constitution, it's a much longer process. You have to pass a law in a session of the General Assembly. There has to be an intervening election. You have to pass it again in the General Assembly a second time. And then if it passes again, it can go to referendum for the people to vote on. And that's what we did. Now, the first session where we passed this amendment to re to allow us to redraw our maps overlapped a little bit with early voting for the gubernatorial election last year. And the Virginia State Supreme Court, at the behest of the Republican Party, said that that could therefore no longer count as an intervening election or an election between two different General Assemblies. It was a dumb ruling. It doesn't really make any sense. There are other laws on Virginia's books about what counts as an election and they just count election day. For example, there are laws in Virginia that like you cannot be required to serve on a jury during an election. That is only one day.

[00:01:27]Otherwise, you could not be required Also, you're not allowed to go to court.

[00:01:30]Like you're not required to come to court on election day in Virginia.

[00:01:33]Uh according to what the Virginia State Supreme Court just said, you don't have to go to court even during early voting, which in some you know, it was like 6 weeks before election day. But anyway, that's how all of these red states are getting this this gerrymandering through in a way that Virginia and California didn't because Virginia and California have constitutional requirements about our bipartisan redistricting commissions that had to be overturned and by overturned by a popular vote. Tennessee doesn't have that.