The push to revive Virginia’s 2026 anti-gerrymandering referendum hit a rocky start this weekend as a critical legal filing from top Democrats reached the state’s Supreme Court with glaring errors on its front page.
Late Friday night, Attorney General Jay Jones, House Speaker Don Scott, and State Senator Louise Lucas petitioned the Supreme Court of Virginia to halt an order that had effectively struck the referendum from the ballot.
However, the joint motion—submitted by Solicitor General Tillman Breckenridge—immediately drew fire online for failing to correctly spell the name of the very state it was filed in.
The document’s opening lines identified the plaintiff as “Speaker of the Virgnia House of Delegates.” Just a few lines down, the filing stumbled again, referring to the defendant’s title as “sentator.”
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These clerical oversights surfaced just hours after the court’s narrow 4-3 ruling, which determined the referendum had not followed proper constitutional procedures to qualify for the ballot.
Despite the typos, the political stakes remain high.
Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries released a forceful statement Friday calling the court’s decision to block the referendum an “unprecedented and undemocratic action.” He characterized the opposition as part of a broader strategy of “voter suppression” and stated that his party is “exploring all options to overturn this shocking decision.”
On the other side of the aisle, the ruling was celebrated as a victory for procedural adherence. Republican National Committee Chairman Joe Gruters took to social media to call the court’s move a “HUGE WIN FOR ELECTION INTEGRITY.”
Attorney General Jay Jones’s office has not yet issued a statement regarding the errors in the filing. For now, the motion stands as a high-stakes legal maneuver marked by the kind of basic proofreading lapses usually reserved for a rough draft.
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