The Daily Signal - Virginia’s Landmark Fair Maps Reform Is Under Threat Again | Brian Cannon

Episode Date: March 21, 2026

Recent legislative actions by some Virginia Democrats threaten to undermine the reform Brian Cannon helped pass five years ago.   It was rare moment where both parties aligned to protect democracy in passing a bipartisan constitutional amendment in Virginia that aimed to remove politicians’ control over drawing district maps, explains the head of NoGerrymanderingVA.org, when he joined Joe Thomas, The Daily Signal’s Virginia correspondent, today.   “ I'm a democrat, and you and I probably don't vote the same way 90% of the time when we go into the voting booth, but I believe in your right to cast a meaningful vote in a free and fair election.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

And, you know, I work with our friends at the Daily Signal as well. And joining us now for kind of a hybrid simulcast, if you will, is the head of no gerrymandering VA.org. He is a dear friend and a confessed Democrat on the program. He is the great Brian Cannon who did the unthinkable five years ago, which was actually amend Virginia's constitution. to try to protect voters and the districts that they lived in to keep the politicians, Brian, as you once taught me, to keep the politicians from picking their voters and allowing it to go back to being the other way around. How are you doing this morning? I'm doing well, Joe, glad to be talking

with you. It's been an ongoing conversation for a number of years, and I love it. So thanks for having me on. Certainly when the constitutional amendment here in Virginia was passed, the, concern was kind of put aside because constitutional amendments are very hard to, or at least we thought they were very hard to change. So therefore, did you move on to other business? Did you, you know, start selling real estate? What happened to you after the constitutional amendment finally went into effect? Yeah. So in 2020, it was, you know, probably the highlight of my professional career, maybe ever, is passing that bipartisan redistricting reform where we had a special moment where the politics and the stars aligned and Virginians don't like gerrymandering. Like that's just a pretty

constant thing. But getting the politicians to agree to a structure that would ultimately give up their power to draw their own maps, pick their own voters was a pretty special moment. So it passed in Virginia in 2020 with 66% of the vote, which was which floored us. We were just, we were so so pleased with how that campaign worked and everything like that. And here we are pulling it all back. I probably should have gone into like real estate or something like that. But I care about structural democracy reform, Joe. Yeah, I am a Democrat.

And you and I probably don't vote the same way 90% of the time when we go into the voting booths, Joe. But I believe in your vote, your right to cast a meaningful vote in a free and fair election just as much as I hope you believe in mine. And I know you do. And so there's some baseline structural problems in our democracy that we can't even expect our representatives to have an honest conversation about taxes, entitlements, et cetera, if we don't have a system that incentivizes them to listen to us.

And so stopping gerrymandering is one of those ways. And there's a number of others ones. So I've moved on. I worked at Fair Vote, which is a national organization, which works on rank choice voting and things like that. But I'm pulled back into this Virginia redistricting battle because the Dems are pushing through an illegal constitutional amendment of a deal. Brian Cannon is on with this. He's got the band back together.

It's redistricting. No gerrymandering, VA.org is where you find them and help them out because it's a lot of the same players. It was only, as you said, five years ago. Folks like Governor George Allen, former Virginia Senator Chap Peterson, was one of the most vocal civil rights fighters in the Virginia Senate until they ousted him Machiavely and Lee as well. it was such a whirlwind when the discussion of redistricting was going on across the nation. It seemed like Virginia wasn't paying attention because we were already covered with the constitutional amendment. So all of a sudden we hear about contributions from Eric Holder's Political Action Committee within a few days. It was a special session was called and it seemed like before anyone had a chance to get a hold of a railing,

this had already passed and was going to come into a calendar. Yeah, Joe, it was crazy. It passed on October 31st. It passed on Halloween, which is fitting for how spooky this amendment really is and how it really does steal Virginians meaningful votes of both parties, by the way, I would say. But yeah, and the other thing is we vote early in Virginia, and I think we vote too early. I wish it was just a couple weeks. It's 45 days.

I know. But over a million Virginians had already cast their ballot by the time the legislature passed this map at the last minute. And by the way, none of these Democrats were campaigning on this, right? It wasn't like Abigail Spanberger said, elect me and I'll gerrymander Virginia. She didn't say that. In fact, she said the opposite, right? Multiple times that she said partisan gerrymandering is detrimental to democracy. She said, I have no plans to gerrymander Virginia.

That turns out not to be true. When we were getting the constitutional amendment pass, she said, She was one of the supporters of the idea of taking it out of the partisan hands and putting it in to the hands of the Virginians. Brian Cannon on with us from no gerrymandering Virginia.org. When this all happened, it happens at such a breakneck pace, do you think there was a certain amount of intent to catch people as we were going into the holidays? we were culminating an election anyway, that there was maybe a hope that nobody would notice that this would happen so quickly as to be able to in some way count last November's election as an intervening election in the constitutional amendment process?

Yeah, that's a good point, Joe. And for your listeners, just so they all know that, you know, California, I think, can amend their constitution if five people sign the back of a napkin and they put it on the ballot. But in Virginia, we're the opposite. You have to go through the legislative. you just need a simple majority, then you need an intervening election, like for the House of Delegates, and then you've got to go through the legislature one more time. So usually that happens. Our legislative sessions, January, February, March timeframe. Usually the constitutional amendment gets passed,

the intervening election in November. You come back in January, you decide whether you want to pass it again. And then it would go to a vote of the people. And it just needs a simple majority every step of the way. but what was robbing Virginia voters of that chance was passing it so last minute before that. It really wasn't expected. But Joe, I also think, as much as I think that was kind of a bit of a McAvellian plan, I also think there's just a level of disorganization

and incompetence in both political parties. And I think they couldn't figure out how to do this. I think they were having trouble getting the votes because there are some Democrats who voted for this. I'm disappointed in them, but they voted for this reluctantly because they were told, you know, oh, it's just going to be temporary. That's not true. You know, oh, it's just, it's just this one-off fight. We have to fight back. That's not true in this way.

And so, you know, they had to scramble to get it done. So I wouldn't attribute too much strategic planning to them. Well, actually, that's an interesting point. It was almost scrambling to find states that could redistrict. And maybe somebody came across and said, maybe if we do this fast enough, what do you make? and one of the opponents, and I know I think in one of the court cases that have been all waylaid through judicial, I call it malpractice, but their jurisprudence, if you will. One of the arguments was that we had been voting, and you mentioned the millions of Virginians that had already voted, the argument against it was one I had never heard before was that because Virginia doesn't tabulate the votes until Election Day, that those 45 days that most Virginians think they're voting, they're not really voting. It's just they're collecting your ballots and we'll tabulate them all on election day. And so that day is the only day that counts as an election day.

And all the other 45 days are just a function of that final election day. When you heard that, did that surprise you that that was one of the arguments? Yeah, because it's, look, the, the, the, definition of what is election day to me is the day that I go to vote personally right now legally in virginia we expanded early voting and in when the democrats last held power in like 2020 or something like that expanded early voting all that stuff for the for COVID most of which by the way I'm in favor of but you you end up with this this election season now and you talk to campaigns and they'll say election day and and they put this through almost at the end of our election season if you will

So I don't know ultimately whether it's legally right or not, like what the Supreme Court of Virginia will do. Right. But I do know that it is incredibly disingenuous. It is dirty, dirty politics. And it robbed Virginia voters of a real chance to have an opinion on something so important. And what was crazy, Joe, is you had a lot of Democrats who didn't really want to do this in the legislature. The ones who were truly, you know, I'm confused. and they were told on October 31st, just vote for it because we can preserve our option to whether

we need to vote for it again or not in the second passage in January and February of next year. Wow. And honestly, that's good logic, right? Keep your doors open. This isn't the final vote. We'll come back and decide later. The problem with it is is then in January, everybody's like, oh, it's inevitable. You can't stop it now.

And they chickened out. And that was the problem. And I think that's what happened to the governor too. Brian Cannon again, it's no jerrymanderingva.org. You have a Facebook page as well, I presume? Yep, we're on Facebook and we're on Twitter or X at No Jerry VA on X and then just no gerrymandering Virginia on Facebook. So we'd love folks to follow us, amplify the message. We're not going to have all the TV money that the bad guys here do.

So we're going to be amplifying via social media. Well, I appreciate it, sir. Thank you for your visit with us. and I appreciate it, and we'll talk again before April 21st, I'm sure. Looking forward to a job, thank you. Getting ready for a game means being ready for anything, like packing a spare stick.

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