1 Trending: The Only Midterms Strategy Lamer Than ‘No Kings’ Is GOP Plan To Do Literally Nothing

2 Trending: The Latest ‘No Kings’ Protest Is The Sound Of A Tired Old Thing Trying To Not Die

3 Trending: Liberals Won’t Confront Fraud Because They Still Believe Government Is The Solution

4 Trending: With Missouri V. Biden Settled, It’s Time For Censorship Reparations

Virginia Redistricting Battle Will Test Republicans’ Post-2024 GOTV Operation

If this measure passes, it ‘would make Virginia the most gerrymandered state in the country,’ Virginia GOP Chair Jeff Ryer told The Federalist.

Share Article on Facebook

Share Article on Twitter

Share Article on Truth Social

Share Article via Email

Will Virginia Republicans’ get-out-the-vote (GOTV) operation be enough to defeat Democrats’ gerrymandering scheme?

That’s the key question that will be answered on April 21, when commonwealth voters head to the polls to decide the fate of a constitutional amendment proposal that would allow the state’s leftist legislature to redraw Virginia’s congressional map in Democrats’ favor. Early voting has been underway in the state since March 6, with more than half a million votes cast as of Sunday, according to The Virginia Public Access Project.

The proposal before voters seeks to sideline the commonwealth’s bipartisan redistricting commission for the near future, giving the Democrat-run General Assembly the power to effectively gerrymander the commonwealth’s U.S. House districts from six Democrats and five Republicans to 10 Democrats and one Republican ahead of the 2026 midterms.

With the Virginia Supreme Court declining to rule on the legality of the likely unconstitutional measure before the April 21 referendum, the burden has fallen on Republicans to mount an effective GOTV operation to counter the initiative and its deceptive ballot language. After an apparent slow start, it seems such efforts are now up and running throughout the commonwealth.

Speaking with The Federalist, newly minted Republican Party of Virginia (RPV) Chair Jeff Ryer said that the state party is actively working to get Republican-affiliated voters to cast their ballots in opposition to the amendment leading up to and on Election Day.

“Everything we have and every resource to which we have access right now is focused on this referendum on April 21,” Ryer said.

Ryer noted that the state party is coordinating with its 124 Republican unit committees across the commonwealth to ensure they’re “getting the word out [to voters] in their localities” about what’s at stake in the referendum. This includes targeting voters in areas of the state that “are reliably Republican” more “intensely than areas that are not.” The state party is also contacting swing voters and possibly Democrat voters, “depending on the type of Democrat voter [they] are.”

“Finding Republican voters everywhere is important, but turning them out in Republican localities in a situation like this is very important, where turnout is going to drive the result more so than it would in a presidential year when just about everybody turns out,” Ryer said.

When it comes to knowing which voters to target in a state where eligible voters don’t register by party, the RPV is relying on voter data from previous Republican campaigns (such as the Trump and Youngkin campaigns) “where Republican-leaning voters have been identified,” according to Ryer. The party chair said Virginia Republicans are also looking at which electors voted in a past GOP primary and employing modeling that’s less reliable than the campaign data but “that gives us an idea of how people are likely to vote … and helps us to know where to go.”

Along with its individual unit committees, Ryer said the Virginia GOP is providing party activists and volunteers with yard signs and campaign literature, as well as the aforementioned voter information........

© The Federalist