In late December, I posted competitiveness rankings of Virginia’s House of Delegates district, assuming that the Census was delayed to the point that 2021 elections end up being held under *current* lines – not newly redistricted ones. Also, see here for Chaz Nuttycombe’s initial 2021 Virginia elections forecasts, including the House of Delegates by district, assuming current district lines. And see here for by 2018 VPAP pundit and Republican Christian Heiens, which would result in “No change from current composition.”
But what are the chances that we’ll actually have to run 2021 House of Delegates races under current lines, because detailed Census numbers don’t arrive in time? Very high, according to Virginia State Senators Scott Surovell and Adam Ebbin, as they discussed a bit earlier today. Check out the following video, in which Sen. Surovell said:
- “Either last week a week before last, the attorney representing the United States Census Bureau said in court that the state level data – that’s the data they call the apportionment data, which is the data they use to decide how many congressional districts are allocated to each state – will not be ready until at least March 9th. That data normally arrives on December 31 by statute or before. And so that data is now delayed 68 days.”
- “The data that they provide to Virginia to to do our redistricting is normally provided on an expedited basis, but they can’t get to that data until they first figure out how many people we have in Virginia overall. So given that the state-level data is delayed 68 days, normally the data we use to draw comes in like mid-February. If that’s delayed 68 days, that means we’re not going to have the data to draw districts until mid-April…They needed the data by April 1st in order to be able to get districts drawn in time to have a primary in August for the House of Delegates.”
- “So it’s becoming…pretty clear…the House of Delegates are probably not running in new districts this year. And typically when that happens, the courts typically order another set of elections in order to remediate what is basically an unconstitutional situation (because you have people that are being unconstitutionally represented because it’s not one-man/one-vote or whatever). And so they might be running like three years in a row — they might be running…this year in the old districts, next year in the new districts, the year after that in the new districts.”
- “So that’s kind of what it’s looking like right now; we’re probably gonna have June primaries for the statewide offices and the House of Delegates, and then the House of Delegates has to run with the congressional officials next year. That’s where I think it’s probably headed.”
- Sen. Ebbin added, “I think it’s a pretty good prediction.“
Sign up for the Blue Virginia weekly newsletter
