FALLS CHURCH, Va. – In Virginia, the gerrymander goes all the way back to the first congressional elections, when then-Gov.
Patrick Henry drew up a district to try to keep James Madison, father of the Constitution that Henry opposed, out of the House of Representatives.Madison, though, campaigned vigorously despite a chronic case of hemorrhoids, and beat James Monroe in a race featuring two future presidents.Now, Virginia voters are deciding whether to alter their state constitution to support redistricting reform that would take the once-every-10-year task of drawing maps out of legislators' hands, at least to an extent, and give it to a bipartisan panel.The debate over the referendum comes one year after a U.S.