To all claiming the Redistricting Vote disenfranchised rural voters, consider this.

Take a moment to consider this reality of the Redistricting Vote.

Folks use the first map to argue how 97 counties and cities, 72% of Virginia localities, voted “No” yet they still lost. They point out that their vote, their representation, is unfairly hijacked by the liberal urban centers. Most notably, Fairfax and Northern Virginia. I can see the point they are trying to make. But it’s not true.

It is certainly true that due to the higher population localities of the other 28 counties and cities, notably Fairfax, Arlington, Richmond City (as seen in the second map), that voted “Yes”, did help pass the Redistricting Vote. And folks rightly point out that people, not land, vote. And let’s face it, more folks voted “Yes” (51.5%) than “No” (48.5%).

But this still does not fully explain why those 97 locality’s vote were not disenfranchised or how these localities actually were fairly represented in this vote. So I offer this further explanation.

All of these 97 “No” localities had at least 11% of their population voting “Yes”. The reddest “No” county, Lee County, had an 11% “Yes” vote. Tazewell County had a 12.3% “Yes” votes. In fact, all of these red “No” vote localities put together had 897, 248 “No” votes to 462,814 “”Yes” votes. 34% of the votes in these red counties and cities voted “Yes”. Those 462, 814 “Yes” votes were more than enough change this Redistricting result had 82,093 voted “No”.

And the same is true for the blue “Yes”vote localities. At least 13% of the votes in these “Yes” counties and cities voted “No”. Fairfax had a 30.5% “No” vote, 115,280 votes. All the “Yes” voting localities together still had a 34.5% “No” vote, 552,871 votes.

So this Redistricting Vote was not just decided by those urban, liberal Northern Virginia voters. It was equally, if not more so, decided by those rural, conservative voters (462,814 of them) who voted “Yes”. So at least 34% of rural voters were represented in this voting result.

This is what the voting results show me.