June 29, 2026 12:12 PM UTC

Blue States Play By The Rules, And Pay The Price

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• by: Colorado Pols

As the Colorado Sun’s Brian Eason reports, bad news for Colorado Democrats hoping to join the mid-decade redistricting wars kicked off by President Donald Trump in an attempt to save Republicans across the country from the voters’ wrath, as the Colorado Supreme Court puts the kibosh on all three proposed ballot measures to redraw Colorado’s congressional maps:

The Colorado Supreme Court on Monday threw out three ballot measures that aimed to give Democrats three more seats in Congress, delivering a victory to Republicans in the nationwide battle over redistricting.

In two decisions on Monday, the state Supreme Court ruled that the effort violated the “single subject” requirement in the state constitution, which requires that ballot initiatives have only one central purpose.

“Changing the constitutionally mandated frequency of redistricting — however temporary the change — is not merely a mechanism to administer the new congressional district map,” Chief Justice Monica Marquez wrote in the unanimous decision. “Instead, it represents a seismic shift to Colorado’s longstanding redistricting process enshrined in the state constitution.”

Michael Karlik reporting for the Colorado Springs Gazette’s political blog:

“We conclude that these are distinct and separate subjects. Temporarily allowing mid-decade redistricting is not merely the means to implement or effectuate the Initiatives’ central purpose of adopting a specific new congressional district map for the 2028 and 2030 election cycles,” wrote Chief Justice Monica M. Márquez in the decision addressing the two combined measures.

She added that authorizing mid-decade redistricting would be “a seismic shift,” and that some voters could prefer to redraw congressional district boundaries sooner or alter the redistricting commission’s power without supporting the specific maps envisioned.

“Conversely, other voters may support adopting one of the initiative’s specific maps to achieve partisan ends, but they might value the stability and continuity that comes with redistricting only once a decade,” wrote Márquez.

Needless to say the campaign in favor of these proposed temporary redistricting measures is not real happy about this decision:

“The success of this partisan attempt to sideline Coloradans from responding to Donald Trump’s unprecedented mid-decade redistricting scheme is disappointing,” said Curtis Hubbard, spokesperson for Coloradans for a Level Playing Field. “While Trump and his MAGA allies regularly sidestep the law and ignore voters, efforts to respond have once again been dealt a legal setback over a technicality.”

Republicans — led by former Secretaries of State Scott Gessler and Wayne Williams — mounted the court challenge in April. Their aim was to have the Supreme Court effectively overturn Colorado Title Board-approved ballot language for initiatives designed to respond to GOP redistricting efforts nationwide.

And just like in Virginia where voters had actually approved a measure to redraw the state’s congressional maps, Republicans looking to preserve the status quo where it suits them win the day while remaining silent about successful Republican mid-decade redistricting in states including Texas, North Carolina, Missouri, Florida, Tennessee, Ohio, Louisiana, Alabama…

In each of these states, as in Colorado, there are different rules governing the redistricting process and efforts to alter it. In Colorado, we passed a constitutional change instituting the current independent redistricting commission meant to curb outright political advantage in drawing maps, and that’s what these measures sought to temporarily suspend.

What we can infer from the success Republicans have had in red states in pursuing mid-decade redistricting at the behest of an unpopular President while states like Virginia and Colorado face roadblocks thrown up by our own judiciary, perhaps simplistically but it does seem to fit, is that we, unlike a lot of these red states, do not have a politically pliant judicial branch. Colorado is a state where Democratic governors sometimes appoint Republicans to the state’s highest court. Texas, on the other hand, hasn’t had a Democrat on its Supreme Court since George W. Bush was governor.

This is what it looks like when only one side cares about the rules. We don’t have a solution, other than for voters everywhere to turn out in numbers that render all of these machinations moot.