Redistricting Plan:Â Â Current Congressional and State Legislative Districts
Federal law requires districts to be of equal population. To calculate the Ideal Population size for a district, divide the state's (resident) total population by the number of districts in a legislative body.
Federal law requires districts comply with the Voting Rights Act. An indicator if a district is protected by the Voting Rights Act is if it's minority voting-age population is above fifty percent of the total voting-age population. The Census Bureau allows persons to declare that they are one or more of five races. Black Voting-Age Population is the total number of persons of voting age who indicated that they are African-American in one or more combination of race. In the tables below, this is also expressed as a percentage of the total voting-age population. The Census Bureau asks a separate question if a person is Hispanic. Hispanic Voting-Age Population is the total number of persons of voting age who indicated that they are Hispanic. In the tables below, this is also expressed as a percentage of the total voting-age population. Note that because the Census Bureau asks these two questions on race and ethnicity separately, these two categories are not mutually exclusive, that is, a person can be Black and Hispanic.
Note that these statistics are adjusted for a Census Bureau error in assigning the Norfolk Naval Base to the wrong census block.
Virginia Governor McDonnell issued an executive order establishing an Independent Bipartisan Advisory Redistricting Commission. The IBARC is tasked with drawing districts that:
4. All districts, to the extent practicable, shall respect the boundary lines of existing political subdivisions. The number of counties and cities divided among multiple districts shall be as few as practicable.
The locality statistics below aid the IBARC in fulfilling this order. The total population for each locality divided by a district's ideal population size provides an indicator of how many districts may be drawing within each locality without crossing a locality boundary. This should be viewed as a hypothetical ideal, as other factors may necessitate additional districts crossing localities' boundaries.