By AP and ReutersPublished On 8 May 20268 May 2026Virginia’s top court has thrown out a new electoral map that was crafted to flip four Republican-held US congressional seats to Democrats, handing President Donald Trump’s party a victory in the run-up to the November midterm elections.The court ruled that the state’s Democratic-led legislature violated procedural requirements when it placed the constitutional amendment on the ballot to authorise the mid-decade redistricting. Voters narrowly approved the amendment on April 21, but the court’s ruling renders the results of that vote meaningless.Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of list“This violation irreparably undermines the integrity of the resulting referendum vote and renders it null and void,” the court said in its opinion.Democrats had hoped to win as many as four additional US House seats under Virginia’s redrawn map, as part of an attempt to offset Republican redistricting elsewhere at the urging of President Donald Trump. That ruling, combined with a recent US Supreme Court decision severely weakening the Voting Rights Act, has supercharged the Republicans’ congressional gerrymandering advantage heading into this year’s midterm elections.The ruling could bolster Republican hopes of keeping their majority in the US House in the midterms. Democrats pursued the Virginia measure as part of a nationwide battle over redrawing US district boundaries that the Republican president initiated last year.In its ruling, the Virginia court agreed with Republican claims that the state’s Democratic-majority legislature did not follow proper procedure in approving the referendum before it was put to the voters. A day after the referendum, a county judge blocked the state from certifying the results, calling the ballot language “flagrantly misleading”. Advertisement Trump reacted to the decision on Truth Social, calling it a ‘huge win for the Republican Party, and America, in Virginia”.“ …
