September 16, 2011 06:26 PM UTC

Reapportionment Final Round

• 5 Comments
• by: Dan Willis

( – promoted by Colorado Pols)

On Monday the Reapportionment Commission will meet to take action on a final round of introduced maps and come up with the one map they are going to send to the Supreme Court for approval.

The latest round of maps are available at the Commission’s website.

Maps numbered 001 are Republican drawn maps, 002 are Democratic drawn maps, and 003 is the map drawn by one unaffiliated member of the Commissiomn. Maps labeled v1 were the ones they started with last week and v2 or v3 are ones that came out of last weeks’ discussions.

My analysis of Denver is below, would love to hear from others about their respective parts of the state.

My focus is on Denver County and then mostly trying to keep our neighborhoods from being too cut up. Denver gets exactly 8 house districts (HDs) and 4.2 Senate Districts (SD’s), this is once the enclaves of Arapahoe and Jefferson that are inside Denver are accounted for.

On the HD maps, all of the versions from the Dems and GOP have the same map of Denver. The Unaffiliated map (U-map) has the districts in Denver arranged a little differently. There are also some numbering changes since last week. HDs 1-8 are all in Denver now and Rep. Kagan’s district is being called HD35, but what’s in a name?

I like the version of Denver on the D & R maps than on the U-Map. All of them divide neighborhoods unnecessarily, but at least the D & R maps try to follow major roads or at least straight lines, with one notable exception.

The D & R Maps have a very ugly jagged line betwwen HD’s 3 (formerly called 9) and 6. For organizers in that area, it will be very difficult to determine which voters are in which district.

The U-map has more instances of stair-step shaped boundaries which also make explaining a district difficult.

Now, at the meeting on Monday, more amendments could be introduced. I would urge the Commission to seriously consider the map of Denver I drew where I only have 5 split neighborhoods and then the splits are mostly on major roads.

On the SD map, I actually prefer the U-map except for a weird division between SD’s 32 and 35 near the south portion of Capitol Hill. I am sure it would be fairly simply to work out a more “squared-off” boundary there.