Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring is right. So is the State Board of Elections, which his office represents. And so are Virginia’s Republican congressmen, who are co-defendants in a suit against the state. All of them either have asked federal judges to post redistricting proposals that might replace the state’s current congressional map, or have signified their assent to the request. Three U.S. District judges will redraw the state’s congressional districts after the General Assembly failed to come up with its own plan by a court-imposed deadline. A number of other interested parties, including Gov. Terry McAuliffe and various good-government groups, who are not litigants in the suit have submitted their own maps.
Oddly, the lawyers who represent the plaintiffs — the ones who complain that the current map tramples upon the rights of the citizenry — do not want alternatives posted in an easily accessible forum. Why? Because the court “is best positioned to make” the right decision. And because people who really want to see the alternatives can request them from the court clerk’s office, so any broader distribution is “unnecessary.”
Bunk.
Full Article: Editorial: A strange reticence on redistricting – Richmond Times-Dispatch: OUR OPINION.