Who has the judgement to pick citizen members of the new redistricting commission?
Critics of the newly-created redistricting commission scoff at the idea of citizen members. They point out the list of possible citizen members will come from party leaders in the General Assembly.
But Brian Cannon at Fair Maps Virginia says a panel of retired judges gets to sift through the list of at least 64 resumes from party leaders and pick the eight citizens who will join eight lawmakers.
"We want to make sure, absolutely sure in this process, that those partisan leanings are balanced out," Cannon explains. "That's why there'll be two Democratic appointees and two Republican appointees; kind of like opposite parties in arbitration or something like that."
David Ramadan at George Mason's Schar School says going through all these steps just to name the citizen members of the commission is a way to make sure nobody will have undue influence over the result.
"Having the judges and going through that process will put a certain degree of separation, number one. Number two, it's less likely to have influence on them by individuals or by certain citizen groups that may want to push for one side or another," he says.
This weekend is the first deadline for the process. The chief justice of the Supreme Court of Virginia has to hand over a list of retired judges who are able to serve on the panel. By the end of the week, party leaders in the House and Senate get to pick one judge. And by the beginning of the following week, those four judges pick a fifth judge. Then around Thanksgiving, the five-judge panel will start receiving applications from citizen members.
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.
