The Virginia Supreme Court has given its blessing to new electoral maps for Virginia’s congressional delegation and its state legislature following a process that for the first time kept elected officials out of the decision-making. The contentious once-in-a-decade exercise included a bipartisan redistricting commission that deadlocked and failed to complete the task. It then fell to the court to appoint two special masters—RealClearPolitics senior elections analyst Sean Trende and University of California–Irvine political science professor Bernard Grofman—to draft the new maps. Trende, who was nominated by Republican lawmakers, and Grofman, who was nominated by Democratic lawmakers, unveiled their proposed maps on Dec. 7 to the court. On Dec. 20, Virginia’s two Democratic U.S. senators—Mark Warner and Tim Kaine—urged the court to reject proposed modifications to the state’s congressional map, claiming that the changes would make it more difficult for three incumbent Democratic lawmakers to be reelected, as The Epoch Times previously …
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