I am hoping there are more propsals coming that simply have not been uploaded to the website yet.

When the Commission took public testimony in Denver, every single Denverite who spoke (there were a couple of people who addressed non-Denver issues there) asked the Commission for the same thing: “Don’t split our neighborhoods in the HD map.” It was truly amazing to see everyone from the city say the same thing, Democrats and Republicans alike.

However, none of the proposed maps honor this wish. The one labelled 001v1 comes the closest, but it notably leaves divided several of the very neighborhoods whose residents were actually there and testified.

On the SD map, there was only 1 person who testified and that was the GOP County Chair, Danny Stroud. He objected to way Denver’s extra little piece of a SD was added to Arapahoe and thought it should be  added to Jeffco. SD map 001v1 does that, but I doubt Danny would approve of the way they did it. There is a band of what they call SD35 that cuts across Jeffco (after including the mountain couties to its west) and includes the area of Denver west of Sheridan. So Grant Ranch in Denver is in the same district with Gilpin County.

My opinion of the SD maps is that none are wonderful, but the initially approved map is probably the best for Denver.

Because Denver’s districts are mostly wholly contained within Denver, it would be very easy for the Commission to adopt the Denver portion of one map and place it in another map if that other map worked better for the rest of the state.