Virginia’s highest court has thrown out a new electoral map that was crafted to flip four Republican-held US congressional seats to Democrats, handing President Donald Trump’s party a victory in the run-up to the November midterm elections. Virginia’s Supreme Court ruled that the state’s Democratic-led legislature violated procedural requirements when it placed the constitutional amendment on the ballot to authorise redistricting. Voters narrowly approved the amendment on April 21, but the court’s ruling renders the results of that vote meaningless. Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of list “This violation irreparably undermines the integrity of the resulting referendum vote and renders it null and void,” the court said in its opinion. Democrats had hoped to win as many as four additional US House seats under Virginia’s redrawn map, as part of an attempt to offset Republican redistricting elsewhere at the urging of Trump. That ruling, combined with a recent US Supreme Court decision severely weakening the Voting Rights Act, has supercharged the Republicans’ congressional gerrymandering advantage heading into the midterms. The ruling could bolster Republican …