The commotion over the Virginia Supreme Court’s ruling against Democrats’ illegal gerrymandering demonstrates how far America has fallen from its constitutional foundations.
by Jacon Grandestaff
The childish reaction of the Democrats to the Virginia Supreme Court ruling that their unconstitutional Gerrymandering was invalid shows they either don’t understand or support our republican system of government.
Virginia Democrats attempted to flip Virginia’s congressional map, from a 6-5 Democratic edge to an outrageous 10-1 split in time for the 2026 midterm elections.
The State Supreme Court decided on May 8 that the General Assembly had violated constitutional procedures by submitting the proposal to the voters.
Virginia’s Constitution mandates that any proposed amendment must pass the General Assembly during two consecutive legislative sessions, with a general election in between. Voters can remove enough legislators to make it impossible for the proposal to be passed a second time.
Virginia Democrats trampled on this requirement. The Democrat controlled General Assembly approved the redistricting plan in October, just days before the fall election and after early voting began. Virginia House Minority leader Terry Kilgore correctly pointed out that this was a violation of the constitution. Then they passed it again in January, and then rushed to have a referendum on it in April.
A Tazwell County Judge , on April 22, agreed that Kilgore and the other Republican plaintiffs had not followed the proper procedures.
The Virginia Supreme Court upheld the ruling of the lower court. Justice Denham Arthur Kelsey wrote, in the majority opinion that “the purpose of Article XII Section 1 is to allow voters to participate in amending their constitution.” In this case, the commonwealth. . . “We denied over 1.3million Virginians the constitutional right to participate in the debate on whether or not their constitution should change.”
Dems exploded in fury, as they always do.
Mobocracy is more important than the rule of Law
Virginia Attorney General Jay Jones charged that the court had put “politics above the rule of law”, claiming “the decision silences the voices millions of Virginians” who voted in all corners of the Commonwealth.
Virginia’s rule of law stipulates, however, that a vote by the people alone is not sufficient to amend the Constitution.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D) declared that the ruling was “an unprecedented, undemocratic act that cannot be upheld.”
Whataboutism is the worst argument Democrats can make in relation to redistricting. They claim, for example, that it is unfair that Florida and Tennessee were redistricted, but unlike Virginia, the citizens of those states did not get to vote. Each state has its own laws that govern redistricting. They don’t even pretend to understand federalism, which is a sign that Democrats can’t govern a constitutional republic properly.
The argument would be different if only keyboard warriors on the left were making it. Many high-ranking Democrats have joined in the demagoguery.
Florida and Tennessee do not have to amend their Constitutions in order to redistrict, even if they had the same rules for redistricting as Virginia. Virginian voters passed a previous amendment establishing a bipartisan commission for redistricting. This amendment was passed with a larger margin of 52-48 than the amendment that passed this time.
The Democrats have stated that they don’t want 50 labs of democracy. They prefer a single, centralized majority, which can move in any direction, depending on the mood of the day.
The founders were afraid of
The Founders of our country made it more difficult to amend the U.S. Constitution rather than pass legislation in Congress. The proposed amendments are submitted by Congress, but they require the approval of three-fourths (instead of a simple majority) of all states. This ensures that any major change is made after much deliberation and widespread support.
They knew that the best way to destroy their country was to allow it to become a democracy.
Virginian James Madison warned, in The Federalist 10, of the “instability and injustice” brought into public councils by “violence among factions.” He added that pure democracies were “always spectacles of turbulence, contention, and turbulence.”
John Adams said it even more bluntly:
Virginia’s waiting period for constitutional amendments between legislative sessions is a deliberate cooling device, designed to force officials and the public into considering proposed changes before changing the document they govern.
This is even more important today than during the Founders’ era, when social media can cause millions to become enraged over a court ruling that they haven’t actually read – based on streamers’ opinions who don’t know anything about civics.
The General Assembly deliberately skipped the cooling-off period in the hope that the courts would give way to the thin margin of consent created by their donors, who poured over $100 million worth of untraceable black money into the campaign. Democrats were outraged when the court ruled in favor of the constitution and not the “will of people”, which was astroturfed.
Democrats radical next steps
Matthew Yglesias, a liberal blogger and commentator on X wrote to 660,000 of his followers: “Don’t understand the mechanism but these Virginia Judges need to be removed.”
He should be able to Google these mechanisms and inform his Virginian supporters on how to lobby their representatives.
Online influencers have always found it easier to rage-batter and hope for revolution than actual democratic activism.
posted that “Those who make violent revolution inevitable, make peace impossible.” Hasan Piker, a Communist streamer, actively campaigns for Democratic congressional candidates.
The New York Times reports on how some Democrats offered concrete solutions during a conference call between Jeffries and Virginia’s Democratic congressional delegation. But none of them will be implemented in time for midterm elections.
proposed invalidating the 2020 constitutional amendment which created the redistricting committee because notices were not properly posted at the courthouses.
The Attorney General Jones filed an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, but his carelessness probably didn’t help him.
The Democrats’ response to this decision should serve as a warning for all Americans who still believe in America’s constitutional republic. A party which willfully disregards constitutional norms in order to rule through plebiscite is not a party you can trust with the reins. The members of this party, and activists with immense influence, demand that it ignore the courts in order to pass whatever they want. This is a threat to the principles Americans fought for and died to defend 250 years ago. Virginia’s Constitution is written to protect it from the temporal passions of mobocracy. Virginia’s Supreme Court has a narrow majority that is keeping the line for now.
Jacob Grandstaff, an investigative researcher for Restoration News, specializes in election integrity and labour policy. This article was republished by Restoration News with their permission.
