Patrick County and the city of Lynchburg both plan to vote on resolutions to bar their registrars from administering early voting for the redistricting referendum in what former Republican Del. Tim Anderson called an effort to force a court decision ahead of the election.
The Patrick County Board of Supervisors plans to vote on the resolution during a special meeting Friday evening, and the Lynchburg City Council is expected to vote on its resolution on Monday. (Update, Friday 10:35 p.m.; the Patrick supervisors adopted the resolution.)
They join the Spotsylvania County Board of Supervisors — which passed a resolution Thursday night to state that the body “suggests that County-owned facilities and County resources should not be utilized” for early voting pending a court ruling on the constitutionality of the early voting window — in a movement spreading across the state.
At the center of the effort is a question regarding when early voting can commence: whether the current March 6 date is in line with the state constitution or whether early voting should not begin until April 16.
“A ballot question cannot be submitted to the voters sooner than 90 days after the General Assembly passes it. The language in the constitution is unambiguous, clean,” said Anderson, a former Republican member of the House of Delegates from Virginia Beach.
The redistricting amendment passed the General Assembly on Jan. 16.
“You add 90 days to that, it puts us on April 16,” he said. “The voters that would be voting on anything prior to April 16th would be submitting the answer prior to the 90-day blackout period that the constitution requires.”
Anderson has taken up the mantle of providing localities with information on how they can oppose the redistricting effort on a local level.
In a social media post on Tuesday, he provided a template for a resolution for county and city boards to use to halt local registrars from administering the April 21 referendum until a court ruled on the constitutionality of the referendum. That post and that template have since been shared by current delegates and others on social media and have prompted at least two localities to introduce such resolutions in their governing bodies.
Localities like Lynchburg and Patrick County will lead the charge in the local effort to force a court ruling, Anderson said. The local effort comes amid a flurry of other court cases led by Republicans to halt the mid-decade push to redraw Virginia’s congressional maps, championed by Democratic lawmakers.
Patrick County Supervisor Andrew Overby confirmed a vote on the resolution will take place Friday evening, but declined to comment until after the action.
Lynchburg City Council leads local effort to halt redistricting
Anderson’s social media post reads: “If I was an elected Supervisor or an elected Councilman — I would move for an emergency meeting to pass the following resolution.”
That’s exactly what Lynchburg City Council member Marty Misjuns, a Republican, plans to do.
Misjuns said he reached out to Anderson when he saw the post because the resolution addresses concerns that were already on his mind.
Last month, the city council passed a redistricting resolution to document that the body “expresses strong opposition to any attempt to remove or amend” the section of the state constitution that governs redistricting and “declares its intent to oppose unconstitutional or illegal redistricting,” among other statements.
A second resolution, of Anderson’s design, would take action on that initial position, Misjuns said.
Misjuns added two clauses to Anderson’s version, according to the resolution posted on the city’s website: one that states that no city-owned facilities or city resources shall be used for early voting, and one that specifies that the resolution shall remain in effect unless a court determines that starting early voting prior to April 16 is consistent with the state constitution. After making the additions, Misjuns said, he ran the new version by Anderson and started the process to schedule a special meeting in Lynchburg with the support of three other city council members.
The meeting is scheduled for Monday at 4 p.m. in city hall and includes a closed session to consult with legal counsel about the resolution, followed by a public vote to adopt the resolution. Anderson will virtually join the closed session, according to the letter that calls for the special meeting. Misjuns said there’s urgency in adopting the resolution now because early voting starts in just two weeks.
At a Lynchburg Democratic Committee meeting Wednesday, members discussed the upcoming referendum and Misjuns’ proposed resolution to pull city resources away from early voting processes. They cited three main concerns with Misjuns’ proposal: that it would trigger the Dillon Rule, a principle followed in Virginia that requires localities to operate within the confines of power granted to them by the state legislature; that the proposal would violate the memorandum of understanding that the city has with the registrar; and that it would interrupt with voting machine testing already scheduled for next week and needed to keep the voting timeline on track.
Some Republicans see concerns with the resolution, too.
“I understand what city council is trying to do with their Resolution. I think everyone in our area is repulsed by the Democrats’ disgraceful attempts to circumvent our constitutional system for drawing congressional districts,” said Sen. Mark Peake, R-Lynchburg, in a statement to Cardinal News. “I think it is appropriate for everyone in our area to speak out against this unconstitutional gerrymander gambit. Unfortunately, I don’t think it is a wise idea for people in our area to not vote for the full 45 days if people in Richmond, Fairfax and other cities are going to be voting for 45 days.”
An effort to force the court to act
The Supreme Court of Virginia issued a decision Feb. 13 that said the April 21 referendum can move forward as the court prepares to hear an appeal of a January ruling by the Tazewell County Circuit Court. That ruling sought to halt the redistricting effort after the court determined that the redistricting effort ran afoul of the state constitution.
Many, including Anderson, were frustrated by the court’s decision not to hear the appeal until after the April 21 referendum.
The same Tazewell County court ruled again in favor of Republicans on Thursday in a separate lawsuit filed by national Republican groups and two of Virginia’s sitting Republican congressmen.
That second ruling called the redistricting effort “legally invalid,” and specifically tells state officials to stop “administering, preparing for, taking any action to further the procedure for the referendum or otherwise move forward with causing an election” on the grounds that the legislation behind the redistricting is full of legal problems.
Attorney General Jay Jones said his office plans to “immediately appeal” the second ruling as well.
“These arguments are already before the Supreme Court of Virginia, the proper forum to consider the arguments, which has set a schedule for receiving arguments and has justifiably allowed the vote to proceed during this time,” Jones said in a statement Thursday.
Anderson pointed out, in an interview with Cardinal News, that a court will need to intervene again if a locality declines to allow voting.
“You can’t have Fairfax County voting and Patrick County not voting,” he said.
He added that he expects the attorney general’s office to sue localities that decline to perform the referendum election, and the courts will have to rule whether or not the resolutions have “teeth.” If the courts rule on the side of the localities that put forth the resolution, Anderson expects that ruling would stop the redistricting referendum statewide.
Attorney General Jay Jones said that localities may not interfere in the conduct of elections through the adoption of resolutions that are in conflict with the Virginia Constitution or state law, in a statement on Friday. He added that resolutions adopted by localities to stop voting on the redistricting amendment are “without legal effect.”
“Electoral Boards and General Registrars are required to follow the Virginia Constitution and statutory law for the localities they serve when conducting elections,” Jones said. “We expect all those charged with maintaining our elections to follow the law and institute early voting on March 6, 2026. If a local board, Electoral Board or General Registrar has a question regarding the conduct of elections, they should contact the State Board of Elections.”
Rae Pickett, spokesperson for the Attorney General’s Office, said the Attorney General “will enforce the law” when asked if Jones plans to sue localities that attempt to bar registrars from administering early voting for the April 21 election.
State Board of Elections Chair John O’Bannon did not respond to a request for comment regarding the Lynchburg resolution.
In conversations with boards of supervisors in Southwest Virginia and the Shenandoah Valley, Anderson has told members that they have an obligation to follow the Virginia constitution, and that administering the election prior to that April 16 date is illegal without guidance from the court.
“The court is going to have to weigh in and define what 90 days means,” Anderson said. “There’s no case law on this.”
So goes Lynchburg, goes the commonwealth
Misjuns said the goal of his resolution is to ensure the state constitution is followed.
“We take an oath — I put my hand on the Bible, I raised my other hand — and that is, you know, swearing to support and uphold the constitution of Virginia, right?” Misjuns said. “And if we allow taxpayer funds in Lynchburg to be used for something that is plainly in violation of the constitution of Virginia, that’s a violation of the oath of office, in my mind, if I willingly allow that to happen, knowing what I know and not trying to stop it.”
In practice, the resolution would order that “no City-owned facilities or City resources shall be made available for the conduct of early voting” prior to April 16, when the 90-day blackout period expires.
“The city council controls the purse strings, is a very simple way of saying it,” Misjuns said.
The resolution makes numerous references to courts weighing in on the constitutionality of the early voting window. When asked if the resolution would prompt court action, Misjuns responded that what happens next is up to the state board of elections and the attorney general.
The ultimate goal is to show “that this whole special election, with the early voting starting March 6, should be invalid,” he said.
If the early voting start date is pushed back to April 16 — when the 90-day waiting window expires — the referendum voting day would be pushed into the summer, reducing or possibly eliminating the time that Democrats have to implement new maps for the 2026 election cycle, Misjuns said.
“That’s what this comes down to: It’s the raw power grab by the Democrats to redraw the maps,” Misjuns said.
Virginia Democrats have called the redistricting effort necessary, after Republican President Donald Trump called on conservative-led states to change their congressional maps in favor of GOP candidates ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. The office of House of Delegates Speaker Don Scott, D-Portsmouth, did not respond to a request for comment regarding the pending Lynchburg resolution.
The NAACP issued a statement denouncing “Lynchburg city council’s attempts to suppress early voting.” Cozy Bailey, the group’s state president, said: “There’s enough political football happening in the courts, and voting rights shouldn’t be at stake at this critical time in Virginia. The integrity of our democratic process is at stake.”
General Assembly leadership released a map for their mid-decade redistricting effort in early February, with 10 districts that Democratic lawmakers said they feel confident their party can win in November. The map is available on the General Assembly’s Legislative Information Service website under HB 29.
“We could be talking about the balance of power in the United States House of Representatives next year, and the future trajectory of our entire nation. And that’s why it is so critical to actually stop and think about the oath of office, why those guardrails exist, and taking a stand even at this level, with action, not just words, to uphold those guardrails,” Misjuns said.
