By Nandita Bose and Diana Novak Jones
WASHINGTON, April 22 (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump claimed on Wednesday without evidence that a Virginia vote to redraw the state’s congressional map in a way that favors Democrats had been “rigged,” as a county judge moved to block the measure.
On Tuesday, Virginia voters approved a redistricting referendum that could help Democrats flip as many as four Republican-held seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and boost Democrats’ chances of winning control of the chamber in November.
Trump, a Republican, wrote in a social media post that “A RIGGED ELECTION TOOK PLACE LAST NIGHT IN THE GREAT COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA!” and blamed mail-in ballots for the outcome.
The post was the latest example of Trump casting doubt on election outcomes he dislikes by portraying ordinary vote counting, particularly the tabulation of mail ballots, as evidence of fraud without offering proof.
The referendum has already faced multiple legal challenges. The Supreme Court of Virginia allowed the referendum to proceed but may end up invalidating it, making the results moot.
And in a separate case that also looks likely to end back up at the Supreme Court, a Virginia county judge, in response to a lawsuit filed by the Republican National Committee, blocked the new map on Wednesday, ruling lawmakers had not followed the rules for the constitutional amendment that the map redrawing required.
Virginia Attorney General Jay Jones, a Democrat, said he would ask the state’s Court of Appeals to overturn Circuit Court Judge Jack Hurley Jr.’s order, which called the ballot language “flagrantly misleading” and blocked the state from certifying Tuesday’s referendum results.
The referendum in Virginia is the latest twist in the nation’s redistricting arms race, which Trump and Texas Republicans began last year as they sought to defend the party’s slim House majority during the midterm elections in November.
Trump, who has not accepted that he lost the 2020 presidential election despite having failed in dozens of courts to challenge the results, has consistently sought to undermine faith in the voting process.
After his 2020 loss to President Joe Biden, Trump falsely claimed widespread fraud and backed efforts to overturn the result, including pressuring his then vice president, Mike Pence, to not certify the election results.
Courts, state election officials and his own administration have since found no evidence of fraud on a scale that would have changed the outcome.
In recent months, the Trump administration has stepped up its effort to revive claims of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election. The Justice Department is seeking a swath of state voter data, while the FBI has reopened old election-fraud allegations in battleground states including Georgia.
(Reporting by Nandita Bose in Washington; Additional reporting by Jonathan Allen and Diana Novak Jones; Editing by Ross Colvin and Chris Reese)
