WV redistricting update: Senate delays vote again, as controversy swirls over map that came out of

WV redistricting update: Senate delays vote again, as controversy swirls over map that came out of ‘the dark of night’


As West Virginia state senators sat in their chamber Friday afternoon, after once again delaying a vote on new Senate district maps that will now be pushed until Monday, Sen. Mike Woelfel took the floor.

“There’s one map that doesn’t have a name, and I’m going to call it the poor bastardized map,” the Cabell County Democrat said. “It’s the map that came out of the dark of night a couple nights ago, really, I think in contravention of the tenor and the hope and the predictions, the aspirations of our committee and our mission.”

That map, released without any senator putting their name on it late Wednesday night, upended a smooth vote on a proposed Senate district map that had passed through the redistricting committee with bipartisan support. The new map disregards the constitutional mandate to keep counties whole, and divides Democratic-leaning cities and lumps them in with more rural areas.

Republicans met behind closed doors all week to attempt to rally behind a single map. The Senate convened on Friday morning, and again on Friday afternoon, and then postponed a redistricting final vote until Monday.

Read more: https://mountainstatespotlight.org/2021/10/15/wv-redistricting-update-senate-delays-vote-again-as-controversy-swirls-over-map-that-came-out-of-the-dark-of-night/