U.S. Senate
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(D) J. Hickenlooper*
(R) Somebody
80%
20%
Governor
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(D) Joe Neguse
(D) Phil Weiser
(D) Jena Griswold
60%
60%
40%↓
Att. General
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(D) M. Dougherty
(D) Alexis King
(D) Brian Mason
40%
40%
30%
Sec. of State
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(D) George Stern
(D) A. Gonzalez
(R) Sheri Davis
40%
40%
30%
State Treasurer
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(D) Brianna Titone
(R) Kevin Grantham
(D) Jerry DiTullio
60%
30%
20%
CO-01 (Denver)
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(D) Diana DeGette*
(R) Somebody
90%
2%
CO-02 (Boulder-ish)
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(D) Joe Neguse*
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90%
2%
CO-03 (West & Southern CO)
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(R) Jeff Hurd*
(D) Somebody
80%
40%
CO-04 (Northeast-ish Colorado)
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(R) Lauren Boebert*
(D) Somebody
90%
10%
CO-05 (Colorado Springs)
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(R) Jeff Crank*
(D) Somebody
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20%
CO-06 (Aurora)
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(D) Jason Crow*
(R) Somebody
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10%
CO-07 (Jefferson County)
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(D) B. Pettersen*
(R) Somebody
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10%
CO-08 (Northern Colo.)
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(R) Gabe Evans*
(D) Yadira Caraveo
(D) Joe Salazar
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State Senate Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
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20%
State House Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
95%
5%
February 17, 2011 06:19 AM UTC
31 Comments
but building on your idea, I’d love to see a District that includes the slightly-north-of-central mountain counties, plus Park, Chaffee and Fremont, plus Pueblo County. What would we need to add into that area to have enough people for one of the seven Congressional Districts? Maybe part of Jefferson County?
Take half of Park, that could work. But, the northern part of Park is more front range – Bailey, etc. While we are at it, we should probably look at redrawing County lines to make more sense, but that is a whole different diary…
Pop quiz:
1920
US population
US House # of seats
2010
US population
US House # of seats
There is a bigger question there. The number of total seats in congress has not changed since ? I don’t know when. If we get more, then Texas and Florida get more, along with elecoral college, and then CHAOS! Wait, chaos can be good?
Damn lack of spell check!
.
I see the President more often than I see my local Congressman.
Dropping the ratio down to 1:500,000 would mean about 650 Members of the House, compared to 435 now, same as back in 1910.
Would an assembly of 1,300 be workable ?
.
Most of the world’s representative democracies have larger lower houses than we do, at least proportionally. Britain has 650 for a population of 62 million (one per less than 100,000 people). Canada has 304 for a population of 34 million. By that measure, we should have about 3,000 members in the House. Not sure we need quite that many…
1,300 would be a good number for a start. Are you interested in promoting government spending for the new Capitol building and offices?
They all get netbooks and gov’t broadband.
They don’t need no stinkin’ offices.
Taxpayers can pay for Skype too.
So we get 2 competitive districts that are each half of the metro Denver area.
Competition is good. In my time trolling (not posting, but reading at work when I have interminably long, pointless phone calls) I hear the discontent among those represented by absent DeGette, Coffman, Lamborn constituents. But, my understanding is the rules generally discourage splitting cities and counties.
And one of the most important rules in the redistricting process is following geopolitical boundaries and communities of interest where possible. Splitting Denver violates those principles.
Hope all you want, it’s against the rules.
not to mention it would probably be illegal.
But CD-6 is certainly Denver metro, just like CD-7 is.
I try not to consider Douglas County part of the Denver Metro – I’d rather have Somalia Springs win a tug-of-war to claim it, from a political boundary standpoint anyway.
is only a small portion of CD-6. It covers Aurora south of Buckley, all those south-metro Arapahoe County cities and towns, and a big chunk of suburban Jefferson County. But sure, if you want to consider Highlands Ranch closer to Colorado Springs than it is to the Littleton and Englewood address across the street, that’s up to you.
Elbert county and the cows, horses and chickens.
Oh – and Park county too.
Highlands Ranch is not a a geopolitical entity. It’s not a municipality – it’s just a name the builder gave the project. If or when they ever incorporate, then they get to be a geopolitical thingy.
At least Lone Pine is a real town. With a ginormous oversized tax base and a correspondingly unrealistic view of the world.
Maybe not, but it’s part of the Denver metro area, which was the point I was making.
By “Denver metro” I meant city. No offense meant to the CO-06 folks living in the southern ‘burbs,
… wouldn’t be illegal (assuming you meet Voting Rights Act criteria) and has been done before. Northwest Denver was in CD2 until the 1980 redistricting. Parts of far SW Denver have been in CD6. On the other hand, if you tried to divide Denver evenly enough to create two competitive districts, you’d probably break up communities of interest and that would fail legal tests.
Yes, parts of Denver have been allocated to other districts over time as needed to balance the population of the districts, but overall, the rules say that where possible, you have to maintain the communities of interest (Denver city is definitely one of those) and follow the geopolitical boundaries (the city limit is one of those…).
The desire driving this discussion is to specifically ignore those rules and split heavily Democratic Denver up in to sections that will move a district (CO-06) into Democratic striking range. And that’s pretty much explicitly what’s prohibited.
My CD-6 home with a mailing address of Aurora is not in metro Denver? Hello?????????
The current CO-03 already covers most of the area you propose, and it still has to encompass Pueblo and a portion of the SE plains in order to add enough population to the district; you’re not going to offset Pueblo with the population of the ski towns… Similarly, there’s no way you could carve an entire district out of the Arkansas River basin, even with Pueblo – it’s 1/3 the size of Colorado Springs which comprises most of the population of CO-05.
What you can do is shift things around a bit, possibly creating an Arkansas River / West Slope / Pueblo district. Fort Collins and the Castle Rock area were I believe the fastest growing areas over the last decade; that means smaller borders for CO-06 and CO-04, and possibly CO-05. Shift CO-05 away from the Arkansas basin and in to the extra population of CO-06; shift CO-04 away from its Front Range holdings and into the SE plains; stretch CO-02 along the Front Range, eating into 4, 5, and 6 as needed while reducing its West Slope component; do some adjustments to the metro districts, probably minimal unless someone can untangle CO-07; and expand CO-03 to cover the areas above.
PS – As for the logic of CO-02, for the most part, it is the recreational corridor of the state. It follows the I-70 corridor through ski country, skips up to Grand County, and works its way out to Boulder and parts of Jeffco. The ski towns tend to vote more like Boulder and the mountain communities of the Front Range; some parts of Grand aren’t covered by that generality, but even so, Grand and Gilpin and Boulder counties are linked by a boundary and common wilderness interests.
…the ski towns vote like Boulder, but have a common boundary. The Boundary is the Continental divide, which is a bit of geographic hurdle, and definitely not a shared interest in water, only a bit of the I-70 corridor. Heck, Chaffee County went for Obama, and we are not exactly Boulder.
I am all for shifting the rest of the Ark River basin into CD-3. Even though it is not the same water, Colorado Springs and the Front range want it all the same. It just feels wrong to have a representative supporting moving assets from one area of his district to another.
CD’s 1, 3 and 4 don’t change terribly much except 3 picks up the mountain counties currently in 2.
CD5 stays centered on Colorado Springs and includes Custer, Elbert, Fremont, Teller, and Park counties.
CD’s 2, 6 and 7 are the ones I have radically changed:
2: Boulder City, US36 Corridor, Broomfield, Adams, and small southern portion of Weld
6: most of Douglas and most of ArapCo
7: Small area of Douglas (western area not including any major population areas); all of Jefferson and the area of Boulder county that is not the city of Boulder or the US36 corridor.
My goal was to keep as many whole counties as possible, and where a county has to be split to try to keep cities in tact (impractical in Aurora, though). This map only splits five counties: Pueblo, Douglas, Arapahoe, Boulder, and Weld. and the ones that are split are only split between 2 districts. Currently we have uglier splits, for example, Jefferson currently is divided between 4 CD’s.
Disclaimer: numbers are estimated at this point, using a handful of harder numbers to extrapolate from. They will need to be compared to the actual numbers when the census releases them.
Current CD-7 looks like the definition of gerrymander.
Not clear where I (Chaffee / Salida) would be though (please, move to CD-3, along with Lake!)
Would love to see the map. PDF link?
Once the Census releases Colorado’s district level info (sometime this week), I may be able to use their tools to create a map, but I find their website overly complicated to use.
Chaffee and Lake would be in 3 under the discription I gave.
Thank you for recognizing that many of us in CD-6 are just right outside of Denver.
I would love to see our boundaries changed. We deserve more than a snowball’s chance in Hell to elect a Democrat here.
The population in Douglas has become so high and SOOOO Republican, I cannot see a way to cut it to give the Dems a sporting chance. Especially since it is also bordered by the heavily-GOP areas of Jeffco, ArapCo, Elpaso and Elbert.
My map does move the district to the D side a bit, but still strongly in R territory.
When it comes to legislative districts there may be some hope for the Highlands Ranch folks though.
Gilpin and Clear Creek probably don’t belong in CO-03, for the same reasons WestDem is mentioning above, and more.
The current CO-02 represents us quite accurately. Unless you plan on moving us in to CO-07…
But it’s a tough job regardless. There are no perfect solutions to redistricting unless we start adding Representatives.
The biggest problem is the population density of the 7-county Boulder-Denver metro area. This brings the metro districts more into the metro geographic area than before.
I was hoping to include Gilpin and Clear Creek in with Jeffco or with Boulder, but culd not make the numbers work unless CD7 stretched past Saguache, which wasn’t very feasible.
Now, of course, the redistricting committee may not make as much of an effort to keep counties whole as I have and then that may open up some possibilities. But I am pretty committed to as few split counties as possible.
Way back in the six-district world on the 1980s, my good friend, the late Bud Hawkins, published an article proposing six more or less competitive districts by dividing the state like a pie with the State Capitol in the center. Other than dividing Denver into six pieces, it was kind of a cool idea.