Backed by Abigail Spanberger, the measure could boost Democrats and counter Donald Trump’s redistricting push

Virginia voters will decide on Tuesday whether to adopt new congressional maps that could help Democrats win control of the House of Representatives and scuttle Donald Trump’s effort to use mid-decade redistricting to preserve Republican control of Congress.

Polls show the referendum to redraw the maps has only a narrow lead in a state that Kamala Harris won two years ago. The issue appears to have engaged many voters, with nearly more than 1.37m ballots cast in early voting.

Purple state which recently elected a Democratic governor will now choose whether to replace existing voting maps with ones that favor Democrats

Nearly three months to the day after his term as Virginia’s governor ended, Republican Glenn Youngkin stood in an unshaded corner of an office parking lot to warn dozens of conservative activists that they were in the midst of “the most important election” in the commonwealth’s 237-year history.

The question before the voters casting ballots at an early voting precinct a few yards away in the city of Leesburg ahead of Tuesday’s special election was whether to temporarily set aside Virginia’s congressional maps intended to advantage neither party and replace them with a new version that could allow Democrats to win all but one seat in the 11-member delegation in the November midterm elections.

Police say the couple’s teenage children called 911 after a domestic dispute at their Annandale home during divorce

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Justin Fairfax, a former lieutenant governor of Virginia whose tenure was upended by allegations of sexual assault, shot and killed his wife Cerina Fairfax on Thursday before killing himself, police said.

Kevin Davis, the chief of the Fairfax county police department in Virginia, said at a press conference that the murder-suicide took place in the context of “an ongoing domestic dispute surrounding what seems to be a complicated or messy divorce”. The shooting took place at the Fairfaxes residence in Annandale, Virginia, and police arrived on the scene after receiving a 911 call from one of their teenage children shortly after midnight.