I was first elected to the House of Delegates in 1977 as part of the five member delegation representing the northern half of Fairfax County and the cities of Fairfax and Falls Church. A similar five-person delegation represented the southern half of Fairfax County. These several members at-large districts came about as Virginia was forced by the federal courts to reapportion its representation to reflect the population shift of the state from rural to suburban regions.
I was defeated in my first bid for re-election in 1979 but was re-elected in 1981. I returned to the House of Delegates just in time for the court challenges to multi-member districts. Just as I had trouble being re-elected in a huge district, the courts found the large multi-member districts to be unconstitutional in not allowing minorities and others an equal opportunity for election as offered in single member districts. The Virginia legislature was required to redraw its district lines twice resulting in elections in 1981, 1982, and 1983. The final acceptable lines were for single-member legislative districts. That experience along with the advocacy of Common Cause made me aware of the potential of having legislative district boundaries to be drawn by an independent redistricting commission. In 1982 I introduced legislation to establish such a commission in Virginia, and I re-introduced the bill more than a dozen times and as recent as this year. It was defeated each time, first by a Democratic majority and more recently by the Republican majority. Each party views redistricting as a way to maintain or expand its majority.
The most recent patchwork of crazy district lines demonstrates once again the value that could come from having an independent commission doing the work. I do not consider the commission appointed by Governor McDonnell as a bipartisan group to be the same as an independent commission of retired judges and academics. His commission was appointed too late with an unclear mandate to influence the outcome. With all the slicing and dicing of communities that has occurred in the current plans, I am pleased that Reston continues as a community of interest within one delegate, one state senate, and one Congressional district.
The plans passed by the General Assembly must be signed by the Governor, approved by the Department of Justice as Virginia is still under the federal Voting Rights Act, and possibly defended in a court suit over whether minorities are appropriately represented. If the plans are thrown out at any of these stages, we could possibly have a repeat of the 1980s with elections this year followed by elections next year and the next. Not an attractive crazy quilt!
Ken Plum is a member of the Virginia House of Delegates.
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