Governor’s advisory panel on redistricting visits Northern Virginia

[Derechos]

Virginia Gov. Robert F. McDonnell’s advisory commission on redistricting paid a visit to Northern Virginia on Tuesday, eliciting a strikingly diverse range of suggestions from voters on how to redraw the state’s election districts this year.

Several speakers urged the panel to design fair, new electoral districts that were, among other things, geographically compact, that united young voters, that respected shared ethnic identities and that honored the longstanding boundaries of local Post Office delivery zones.

Some spoke out against the ugliness of gerrymandered districts that snake and twist across large geographic areas — but they also acknowledged the need for more than a cookie-cutter approach because of the importance of creating districts that reflected “communities of interest” or the voting power of minority groups. Another decried a report in Politico that Virginia’s delegation to the House of Representatives had already cut a deal that would protect Democratic and Republican incumbents. Above all, people wanted districts that would be fair and competitive, and not designed to protect incumbents.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/virginia-politics/post/governors-advisory-panel-on-redistricting-visits-northern-virginia/2011/03/16/AB90gLf_blog.html