The American president is once again calling out electoral fraud, this time in Virginia, where the Democrats have just won a referendum on Tuesday allowing them to redraw their electoral map in order to win additional seats in Congress. As during the 2020 presidential election, Donald Trump specifically attacks postal voting and appeals to the “courts”.

Published on: 04/22/2026 - 11:44 p.m. Modified on: 04/23/2026 - 07:29

Like a sense of deja vu. Donald Trump on Wednesday April 22 described as "rigged" the referendum won the day before by the Democrats in Virginia and which allows them to redraw the electoral map of this state to potentially glean four additional seats in the American Congress.

“The Democrats got away with another dishonest victory,” declared on his Truth Social platform the Republican president, accustomed to accusations of electoral fraud, in particular those – unfounded – concerning his defeat in the 2020 presidential election against Joe Biden.

“A rigged election took place last night in the great state of Virginia,” Donald Trump said in all capital letters. “All day long, the Republicans were winning, the enthusiasm was incredible, until the very end when, of course, there was a massive counting of 'mail-in ballots'! Where have I heard that before,” the Republican president asked sarcastically in reference to the 2020 election. “Let's see if the courts will remedy this parody of 'justice',” he concluded.

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Republicans have filed multiple legal challenges to prevent this redistricting, some of which have not yet been decided but could ultimately be decided by the Virginia Supreme Court. This authorized the holding of the referendum.

A decree to regulate postal voting

Donald Trump regularly denounces the possibility in many American states of voting by mail, and he cites this method of voting as one of the main reasons for his defeat – which he still does not recognize – in 2020. At the end of March, he signed a decree intended to more strictly regulate postal voting, a measure challenged in court by the Democrats.

Tuesday's referendum in Virginia, a large state on the East Coast, was seen as a response to the electoral redistricting initiative launched by Donald Trump and the Republicans in states like Texas (south). Of Virginia's 11 members of Congress, six are currently Democrats. With the new territorial division, the hope on the left is to see this figure rise to 10 during the crucial mid-term elections in November.

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Redrawing districts in a partisan manner with grotesque geographic contours is an old recipe for electoral cooking in the United States, known as "gerrymandering."

In 2025, Donald Trump demanded from Texas leaders a redistricting that would allow Republicans to gain five seats in Congress. Ohio and North Carolina followed Texas' lead and redrew their maps to offer a handful of additional seats to the president's party.

Faced with this offensive, the Democratic Party decided to retaliate and carry out its own redistricting in certain states, mainly in California (west), and therefore now in Virginia.

With AFP

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