President (To Win Colorado)
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(D) Kamala Harris
(R) Donald Trump
80%↑
20%
CO-01 (Denver)
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(D) Diana DeGette*
(R) V. Archuleta
98%
2%
CO-02 (Boulder-ish)
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(D) Joe Neguse*
(R) Marshall Dawson
95%
5%
CO-03 (West & Southern CO)
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(R) Jeff Hurd
(D) Adam Frisch
52%↑
48%
CO-04 (Northeast-ish Colorado)
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(R) Lauren Boebert
(D) Trisha Calvarese
90%
10%
CO-05 (Colorado Springs)
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(R) Jeff Crank
(D) River Gassen
80%
20%
CO-06 (Aurora)
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(D) Jason Crow*
(R) John Fabbricatore
90%
10%
CO-07 (Jefferson County)
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(D) B. Pettersen
(R) Sergei Matveyuk
90%
10%
CO-08 (Northern Colo.)
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(D) Yadira Caraveo
(R) Gabe Evans
52%↑
48%↓
State Senate Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
80%
20%
State House Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
95%
5%
December 08, 2010 07:31 PM UTC
21 Comments
most significantly, the state Supreme Court.
The redistricting of the Colorado General Assembly falls under state law and thus under the Colorado Supreme Court.
Congressional redistricting – I think – falls under federal law and potentially the US Supreme Court. Seems like the last few Congressional maps were finally drawn by the federal court, weren’t they?
If so, my apologies. Those ten year old memories tend to blend together on ocassion!
A trial was held in Denver District Court before Judge Coughlin in December 2001. He drew the congressional district lines. That case was appealed to the Colorado Supreme Court and that court affirmed Judge Coughlin’s decision.
After the 2002 election when the Republicans took over both houses of the General Assembly, that body passed a bill signed by Gov. Owens that changed the lines drawn by Judge Coughlin. Then Attorney General Ken Salazar sued Secretary of State Davidson to have the bill declared unconstitutional in an original proceeding before the Colorado Supreme Court. That court held the bill passed by the legislature violated the state constitution. The Republicans filed a writ of certorari (an appela) to the U.S. Supterme Court which was turned down by one vote.
although subject to federal constitutional concerns of equal protection and the like. Federal districts are drawn by the GA, state districts by the state commission. Colo. Const., art V, sections 44 & 48. If the GA deadlocks, or any of the redistricting is challenged, then the state courts have to step in.
During the debate over HB10-1408:
In Colorado, Congressional Seats will be drawn by the Courts. No deal will be made between Republicans and Democrats.
Legislative districts will be drawn by the Democrats. The new Supreme Court Justice need only appoint one Democrat, or one Democrat leaning independent to the commission with his four picks. Given that it’s Michael Bender, my guess is that he will do so.
As for the national scene, not as bad as it seems. Remember, of the seats to be redistricted which give the Republicans an advantage, most are already heavily Republican favorable draws. For instance, 79 seats to be redistricted in Florida, Texas and Ohio are already skewed heavily to the Republican side by previous redistricting. In addition 46 of the seats where Republicans control are in southern seats (Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi and Okalahma) where all but the majority-minority seats are already in Republican hands.
So reality is that the only thing that will really change with re-districting is the change of a handful of seats that move from state to state, and even some of those will allow Democrats opportunities to screw Republicans. For instance, NY loses two seats and the Democrats control. Guess which two Republican seats in NY are going to go away? In Ohio where Republicans control and they’re going to lose a seat, there is already such a huge Republican draw with seats that its likely that Republicans might have to draw a map where one of their own loses. Same is true for Michigan.
Back to Colorado, the only way for the Democrats to improve their picture in Colorado (currently 3 solid D’s and 1 swing on the west slope) is to divide Denver and stick Douglas County with the eastern plains. This would allow the Dems to put District 6 in play and put District in play by cutting off the terrible eastern plains and putting some more of Boulder and the Democratic ski country with District 4. Dems are simply too stupid to propose such a thing and a Court probably wouldn’t buy it either. So, the only thing they can do is to make District 3 more evenly divided and hope for the best.
Rules on redistricting require approximately even population, geographic conciseness, and keeping counties together as much as possible. You also can’t split up areas of racially consistent demographics, which would be an obvious case of racial discrimination.
If you look at the congressional lines in Colorado, only a few, smaller counties are split. The only issue that has to be fixed is to even up the population changes, in which certain counties, have had greater or lesser proportional growth: Weld, Douglas, El Paso, Eastern Plains.
With those observations, each congressional district is dominated by one or two major population centers, and it isn’t easy to make changes to the political balance. You can forget making big changes to the entrenched R and D CDs, so you only need to look at the swing districts. Maybe the most dramatic shift possible would be moving Pueblo from CD03 to CD04, but then CD04 has to lose a chunk of Larimer which is a minimal net change in political balance.
I dont think there are hard and fast rules for congress except 1 person , 1vote, and don’t screw minorities. But if the courts have to decide, they can make the guidelines you suggest, But the constitution doesn[t mention political parties so gerrymanders are fair game. the4 con amendment on legislative seats did set rules. But counties are split all the time in congressiuonals –look at arapahoe and jeffco and boulder, por exemplo
The Republicans and Democrats have to be on the same page for any Congressional map to be adopted.
In Colorado, the population growth in Democratic leaning and Republican leaning counties has been almost identical, but the Republican leaning counties are much more strongly Republican leaning than the Democratic leaning ones.
Tinkering with the numbers and places that the lines can be drawn and looking at the process, my inclination is that there is a slight GOP advantage in Colorado.
Democrats didn’t go from having two seats in our seven seat delegation to five by virtue of redistricting, nor did it fall to three seats for that reason. Democrats were able to overperform by running conservative Blue Dogs in CO-3 and CO-4, because Marilyn Musgrave imploded and disregarded her district’s priorities, and by riding the 2008 Obama wave of disgust built up during W’s administration. Only CO-7 is “naturally” competitive for a typical Democrat running against a typical Republican in an open seat, and Perlmutter has needed incumbency, demographic trends in the district, and a couple of lightweights running against him to turn CO-7 into a distict that looks safe.
I don’t think the redistricting process will be thrown to the courts, however. The Colorado General Assembly does not suffer from the same level of incivil partisanship that the U.S. Congress does, and Governor-Elect Hickenlooper has built his poitical career on his ability to get people who have opposing interests to compromise. While the nation as a whole strongly endorsed the Tea Party approach, it was not embraced wholeheartedly in Colorado, where the Republican establishment’s clout was sufficient to mute the impact of Tea Party revolutionaries.
Also, the one vote GOP majority in the House is sufficiently thin that moderates in that House GOP caucus have more influence than they have in some past years.
I don’t think that it is possible to draw a set of districts that cause the number of Democrats or Republicans from Colorado to fall below two. In between the safe seats you can draw one safe Dem seat, one safe GOP seat and one competitive one, or perhaps one safe GOP seat and two competive ones, but the amount of wiggle room isn’t huge, and the biggest shifts require a bolder departure from the current lines than I suspect that either side will be able to get drawn.
Uhh, the Ds won’t gerrymander Colorado because they CAN’t! You need both chambers of the lege and a gov — and the Rs staved off that by one vote, taking back the house. So, most likely, it’s either compromise or back to the courts. As Republican 36 noted, it’s up to the state courts, according to a 9-0 opinion by SCOTUS, written by Scalia himself.
Craig is right that the Ds will control the reapportionment of the lege itself, because Bender but certain to appoint a Democratic majority to the commission. But the law does put some limits on gerrymandering there and when in 2000 the commission went too far in screwing Rs in the Senate, the Colorado Supreme Court voted 4-3 to overturn it and make it try again. The two Republicans, Kourlis and Coats, were joined by Rice and Hobbs in that vote.
It went to the courts, who wound up using a plan very close to the Democrats’, originally because the Dems controlled the state Senate but not the House IIRC. The GOP controlled legislature went back again and re-redistricted after that, and that gerrymandered redistricting was what was thrown out. Our districts today are basically what the Democrats wanted.
Because Dems tend to draw fairer districts than GOPers and game the system less overall. I believe that is the bottom line.
A trial was held in Denver District Court before Judge Coughlin in December 2001. He drew the congressional district lines. That case was appealed to the Colorado Supreme Court and that court affirmed Judge Coughlin’s decision.
Assuming you mean the congressional redistricting, the lege did deadlock because the Rs had the House and gov. and the Ds the Senate. Then, as Republican 36 notes above, the case went to court and Judge Coughlin drew the present lines. After 2002, as R-36 again noted, the Rs tried the infamous Midnight Gerrymander, but that was thrown oput of state court — and they also lost in several federal courts.
That the judge drew congressional lines that were very close to what Dems wanted, which were fair districts.
He chose one map from a number of maps that were submitted to him. He chose a map that was physically drawn by Scott Martinez of the CDP.
I don’t believe Coughlin actually drew the lines
The court doesn’t really have the resources, or the desire, to draw them. it throws out standards and lets the parties do their thing. it’s kind of like last best offer arbitration, where the arbiter must choose management or labor position but can’t split the difference. That system encourages the parties to head for the center. Splitting the difference exaggerates differences, in the hope that the final “split” will give you more.
The Dems are in a stronger position today than the Rs were in 2001.
for a gerrymander, you need to control all three: house, Senate, Gov. Whether its 2-1 or 1-2 doesn’t matter. So either they compromise or it’s back to court.
These are Democrats we’re talking about! They could have supermajorities in both houses and the governor and Republicans would find a way to school them. 🙂
Joking aside, isn’t the makeup of the court more favorable to Dems now than it was to Rs then?
the court was 5-2 democrat then, it’s 5-2 democrat now. Eid has replaced Kourlis, but they are both Rs and Eid is probably more conservative. But a lot depends, if you go to court, on whom you get as a trial judge. The Supremes are very likely to go with anything a trial court writes, unless it’s totally off the wall. Ironically, the Rs were pretty sure Judge coughlin was going to go with their plan, not that of the Ds. He probably would have but the Ds revised theirs in the final days so it really was pretty reasonable. The fact that 3, 4 and 7 are swing districts is pretty impressive — both have swung, 3 twice, 7 once, 4 twice — since the current lines were drawn. 1 and, to a lesser extent, 2 are solid d, 5-6 unbreachably r.
And don’t be so sure Dems can’t gerrymander with the best of them. They did one hell of a roto-rooter on the Rs in California, that’s for sure. Nothing brings out the blood lust like redistricting.