Now that voters have approved of a new redistricting commission, half of the members have been named. And, state officials are now taking applications for the other half.
Have you ever looked at a map of General Assembly districts or congressional districts and thought to yourself, “Hey, I can do better than that?” Well now is your chance. You can apply to be a citizen member of the Virginia Redistricting Commission. Just submit your resume to the Division of Legislative Services.
Senator George Barker says the first thing you need to do is catch the attention of one of the political leaders in the General Assembly.
"Well, they have to be nominated by the political leaders, so there is some political nature to it," he explains. "But it's also likely that you will get a number of people there who are not overtly political."
Not overtly political because anyone who has ever run for a partisan office will be excluded. But Brian Cannon at Fair Maps Virginia says people who have run for nonpartisan offices can still apply.
"If you are a former school board member or you're a former city administrator or you've got expertise, you don't have to be an expert in anything, but if you have an expertise like you're a demographer or you’re a mathematician or something like that, you're probably more likely to receive a favorable look from the judges," Cannon says.
The four political leaders in the House and Senate will send a total of 64 resumes to a five-judge panel. The judges will make a final determination of which eight people will serve as citizen members. The new commission will select a chairman and then wait around for Census data, which hopefully will be available sometime in March or April.
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.
