In one sense, this outcome should surprise no one. On the other, the judicial process these days make this a pleasant shock, if perhaps mild.
The Virginia state supreme court struck down the referendum that Democrats slammed through their primary election. The irregularities in the process were so profound that it renders the vote result “null and void”:
The Virginia Supreme Court on Friday struck down a voter-approved Democratic congressional redistricting plan, delivering another major setback to the party in a nationwide battle against Republicans for an edge in this year’s midterm elections.
The court ruled that the state’s Democratic-led legislature violated procedural requirements when it placed the constitutional amendment on the ballot to authorize the mid-decade redistricting. Voters narrowly approved the amendment April 21, but the court’s ruling renders the results of that vote meaningless.
“This violation irreparably undermines the integrity of the resulting referendum vote and renders it null and void,” the court said in its opinion.
There were many reasons to throw this out, but the necessity of having a full election intervening between the proposal and a referendum became the hinge for the 4-3 decision. The Commonwealth argued that the 2025 election counted because the legislature approved it before Election Day, but the majority scoffed at the idea that 1.3 million early voters had not participated in an election:
In this case, voting in the general election for the House of Delegates began on September 19, 2025, and ended on Election Day, November 4, 2025. The General Assembly voted for the first time to propose the constitutional amendment to the electorate on October 31, 2025. By that date, over 1.3 million votes had been cast in the general election, which was approximately 40% of the total vote for that election cycle. …
For these reasons, we hold that the definition of “general election” in Article XII, Section 1 describes the combined actions of voters casting ballots and officers of election receiving those votes and closing the polls on the last day of the election. The plain and ordinary meaning of the expression matches the historical definition embraced by the courts and legal scholars. Article XII, Section 1 requires an intervening “general election” after the first legislative vote in favor of a proposed amendment and prior to the second legislative vote before the General Assembly has the constitutional authority to submit the proposal to the voters. In this case, the General Assembly passed the proposed constitutional amendment for the first time well after voters had begun casting ballots during the 2025 general election.
Former Virginia AG Ken Cuccinelli is digesting the decision in real time, but agrees that this was the bridge too far for the court:
The court lays out (fn 6) the special session issues and clearly things them very serious, and lists much law against the GA, but does not decide that issue b/c it is deciding based on the intervening election issue of Art. XII, Sec. 1 of the Va. Const
— Ken Cuccinelli II (@KenCuccinelli) May 8, 2026
[more to come]
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