Can a ballot referendum implicitly tell you the “correct” way to vote? That’s precisely what happened this week when Virginians voted to strip nearly congressional representation from half the state in the name of “restoring fairness.”
President Donald Trump reacted to the April 21 Virginia redistricting referendum on Wednesday, calling it “rigged.” He claimed there was a “massive ‘mail-in ballot drop’” and that the language on the ballot was “purposefully unintelligible and deceptive.” I don’t know about any ballot drop, but he’s absolutely correct about the ballot language.
Virginia voters were literally asked whether they wanted to “restore fairness” on the ballot. That’s not at all what the ballot was about. The state voted for former Vice President Kamala Harris over Trump by a margin of about 5 points, 52% to 47%. It has congressional representation that reflects the population incredibly well, with six Democrats and five Republicans. What Virginia voters just elected to do was to allow Democrats to alter the maps to make it 10 Democrats in Congress to just one Republican. What, exactly, is fair about that?
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The way questions are framed in polls objectively impact the results. If such framing occurred in a scientific study, it would be thrown out and laughed to scorn. When you frame a referendum as “restoring fairness,” you’re impacting — if not outright predetermining — the results. Even if it were true that giving 47% of the state just 9% of congressional representation is fair, that framing taints the legitimacy of the results.
Even Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) recognizes that the referendum’s results do not produce a congressional delegation that reflects the Virginia voting populace. He told Fox News this week, “90% of Virginians are not Democrats. That’s true. … But we need a delegation that will stand up to Donald Trump’s tyranny.”
In order to stand up to Trump’s so-called “tyranny,” Virginia Democrats want to rule by the tyranny of the slight majority. Would the majority of Virginian voters really support this, even if they’re liberal? I have a hard time believing that. But with the referendum being framed in such an unfair and, as Trump put it, “deceptive” way, the winner was picked before the first ballot was cast. We would expect such electoral practices in places such as Russia or Venezuela, but never at home in the United States.
Trump suggested that the courts might “fix this travesty,” and indeed, there is a good shot of that happening. There are multiple lawsuits pending in regards to Virginia’s redistricting referendum, including on the ridiculous language of the ballot.
The Supreme Court ruled in 2001 that states cannot attempt to influence congressional elections through ballot designs that favor or disfavor candidates. While April 21 wasn’t a congressional election, it does directly impact the outcomes of the 2026 midterm elections. As a result, courts may apply those same neutrality principles to the language of the referendum.
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Republicans currently hold a four-member majority in the House of Representatives. If the results of Virginia’s redistricting referendum are ratified, the Democrats will start the 2026 midterm elections at a +4 margin — erasing the GOP majority without having to spend a dime campaigning to flip those seats.
If Republicans lose the midterm elections, Trump will predictably say they were rigged, too. And if the margin of GOP defeat is four or fewer, he’ll have a point.