Augusta County leaders debate blocking early voting in redistricting referendum

Michael Shull thinks Augusta County having three people in Congress instead of one is somehow a bad thing.

Seriously, Riverheads District folks, this is the best you can do?

“If you look at the map, Augusta County gets cut up so that Augusta County citizens don’t mean anything,” said Shull, who represents the Riverheads District on the Augusta County Board of Supervisors, toward the end of a BOS staff briefing on Monday, per reporting from The News Leader.

Shull was testing the water on introducing a show resolution to get the Board of Supervisors to block early voting in the April 21 referendum that would allow for a redo of the state’s congressional districts.

The staff briefing started at 1:30 p.m.

At 10:47 a.m., I hit publish on a column suggesting that Augusta County leaders would want to consider following the lead of local leaders in Patrick County and Spotsylvania County in blocking early voting, against their own interests.

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ICYMI

• MAGAs trying to get Virginia localities to block early voting in April 21 referendum

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“I don’t think this conservative county should be restricting our voters from voting because it’s going to be the conservative counties that actually keep this thing from passing,” said Scott Seaton, one of the MAGAs on the BOS, the one who pretended he had political dirt on tape from a 2023 closed session that led us here at AFP to fight a protracted battle in court to try to get access to whatever it was.

He could have just made the tape public, of course.

‘Twas all just for show.

Anyway.

We have two polls out – one from Christopher Newport University, one from Roanoke College – with vastly different conclusions on how voters will cast their lots in the referendum.

The CNU poll had 51 percent of those surveyed in favor of the mid-decade redistricting change; the Roanoke College poll, just out on Monday, has 52 percent saying they would vote for the current system to remain in place.

One or the other is way, way off, and you can guess which one.

Even the guy at Roanoke College whose name is attached to the poll, Harry Wilson, the interim director of the school’s Institute for Policy and Research, concedes that there were differences in the wording of the polling question vis-à-vis the wording of the question on the ballot that could have influenced the poll numbers.

“On the redistricting issue that seems to be headed to a referendum, Virginians generally prefer the current system. Still, given the partisan ramifications and the Democratic-inspired wording of the question ‘to restore fairness’ to elections, this may not be indicative of the outcome,” Wilson said.

Just sayin’, if you live in Augusta County, right now, you have a single, ineffectual MAGA congressman, in Ben Cline, who thinks he’s doing something when he gets $17 million in the federal budget to build a mile or two of a single lane on I-81.

You could have three – Morgan Griffith, another back-bench MAGA, and then also two Democrats, with Democrats set to be the majority party again when Congress reconvenes in 2027.

I know, I know – we vote against our actual best interests here, have done that for decades.

I know what you’re going to do; don’t be mad at me for saying you’re stupid for doing it.