Re-Districting could bring big changes to Botetourt’s representation
B5 
A5
Current 19th House of Delegates District
The Commonwealth of Virginia is currently involved in redistricting. This includes, House, Senate of the General Assembly and Congressional House lines. (The Congressional Senate is two per state with no districting.) The Commission has appointed members charged with creating the districts based on new Census Data from 2020 and a hope they should not be gerrymandered, but the details of that are just that.
None of the Commissioners are from West of Lynchburg.
Each District is supposed to have 784,672 residents.
You can read all of the information on the following website and leave remarks.
https://www.virginiaredistricting.org/legdistricting/virginia/comment_links
You can leave remarks, though as of Monday Oct. 4, the Public Hearings on the redistricting have begun. For the sake of brevity, The Botetourt Bee is just posting the House of Delegates proposal, because our Buchanan resident Del. Terry Austin is the 19th District Delegate.
How re-districting is finalized:
The General Assembly will approve the new district and if that doesn’t happen, the Supreme Court of Virginia will decide. These districts will last until the 2030 Census. No matter who is elected Governor, he will not be able to make a difference in the redistricting as it is not allowed by State Code. These maps are the current and possible new districts for the House of Delegates. You can follow the Senate and US Congressional Districts on the above website. They change a bit every few days, but time is of the essence as an October due date looms large.
What could happen to Botetourt:
Buchanan would be lopped off into a parcel of the District 90 in one rendition with most of the 90th District maintaining Bedford County and Smith Mountain Lake residents. The Southern part of the County included in with Roanoke County in the 93rd District and the rest of the County in the 86th with Alleghany, Rockbridge and Craig(A5)
In the other rendition where B5 and A4 are Identical, with Southern Botetourt separated into the 91st and the rest in 93rd. Again, Botetourt County is bisected with the southern end going into the 93rd with part of Roanoke County and Craig.
Thoroughly confused? So are we. But if you have a dog in this fight, go to the website and make comments. This could turn in to a 10-year mistake or maybe a blessing, but it is the voter, the citizen’s time to make a written comment on what works best for this area. Southwestern Virginia counts even if we don’t have a commissioner representing us on the redistricting panel.
Cathy Benson, The Botetourt Bee. Maps from the Re-districting website
