Partner Toolkit

For organizations, group members, community leaders, or individuals - here are some resources to help you and your neighbors get make your voices heard in the redistricting process.

To view the whole toolkit, click here.

Every 10 years, the United States conducts a constitutionally-mandated national Census to count every person living in the US. Following the Census, all states are required to redraw their electoral district boundaries in a process called “redistricting” to make sure districts are proportionally representative and adhere to the “one person/one vote” requirement of the Equal Protection Clause.

“Gerrymandering” is the manipulation of the redistricting process to guarantee certain election outcomes. In the past in Virginia, both Republican and Democratic politicians have used their authority to draw maps to ensure their own re-election by choosing the voters they want in their districts.

Luckily, in November 2020 Virginia voters approved Amendment 1 by 66% to change our unfair redistricting process and establish the bipartisan Virginia Redistricting Commission. Now, 8 citizens and 8 legislators are in charge of Virginia redistricting and have a historic mandate to draw maps transparently with unprecedented community input. Below, we’ve included the critical ways that you, as an individual or an organization, can get involved in Virginia redistricting to ensure fair districts that respect and represent communities.

For more information on redistricting, see this resource in English, Chinese (simplified), Chinese (traditional), Korean, Spanish and Vietnamese developed by Prof. Justin Levitt of All About Redistricting. You can also view these video explanations in English and Spanish.

According to Virginia Code, “a ‘community of interest’ means a neighborhood or any geographically defined group of people living in an area who share similar social, cultural, and economic interests. A "community of interest" does not include a community based upon political affiliation or relationship with a political party, elected official, or candidate for office.”

Representable and Districtr are two easy-to-use tools designed for community members to actually draw maps of communities of interest and submit them to the Redistricting Commission. The more community members that submit maps to the Commission, the more likely your community is to be respected by future districts.

To stay in the loop about Community of Interest mapping trainings, you can sign-up for partner organization action/event updates here or individual updates through our volunteer form here! You can also watch this video explaining how to use the Representable tool.

For more information on communities of interest, see this resource in English, Chinese (simplified), Chinese (traditional), Korean, Spanish and Vietnamese developed by Prof. Justin Levitt of All About Redistricting.

Submitting public comment to the Virginia Redistricting Commission is an important way to have your voice heard and can be done by emailing varedist@dls.virginia.gov. When you submit a public comment remember to introduce yourself, the goal of your comment (ex. “Keeping my community together”), describe a map of your community such as boundaries, significant landmarks, and gathering places, then describe your community by including social and economic demographics, narrative information about its history and culture, and what connects the people and why it’s important that they be kept together.

As a note, when you submit your comments to varedist@dls.virginia.gov, the whole email will be published here, including your email address and any information you include in the signature line of your email. For privacy and security reasons, we suggest excluding your phone number and address.

For more information on preparing a high-quality public comment, see this resource in English, Chinese (simplified), Chinese (traditional), Korean, Spanish and Vietnamese developed by Prof. Justin Levitt of All About Redistricting.

To view previous commission meetings as well public comments, click here.

Want more?

Want more information? As an individual, you can sign up here for action updates, trainings and alerts! Organizations can sign up for partner alerts here.

Have a group or organization you’d like OneVirginia2021 to give a presentation to? Sign up here. We’re happy to lead Community of Interest mapping trainings or just overview the process at-large.

What else can we do to help? Let us know at director@onevirginia2021.org.