U.S. Senate
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(D) J. Hickenlooper*
(R) Somebody
80%
20%
Governor
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(D) Michael Bennet
(D) Phil Weiser
60%↑
50%↓
Att. General
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(D) M. Dougherty
(D) Jena Griswold
(D) David Seligman
40%
40%
30%
Sec. of State
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(D) A. Gonzalez
(D) J. Danielson
(R) Sheri Davis
50%
40%
30%
State Treasurer
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(D) Brianna Titone
(D) Jeff Bridges
(R) Kevin Grantham
40%
40%
30%
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*
(R) Somebody
90%
2%
CO-03 (West & Southern CO)
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(R) Jeff Hurd*
(R) H. Scheppelman
(D) Alex Kelloff
70%
30%
10%
CO-04 (Northeast-ish Colorado)
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(R) Lauren Boebert*
(D) Trisha Calvarese
(D) Eileen Laubacher
90%
20%
20%
CO-05 (Colorado Springs)
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(R) Jeff Crank*
(D) Somebody
80%
20%
CO-06 (Aurora)
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(D) Jason Crow*
(R) Somebody
90%
10%
CO-07 (Jefferson County)
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(D) B. Pettersen*
(R) Somebody
90%
10%
CO-08 (Northern Colo.)
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(R) Gabe Evans*
(D) Yadira Caraveo
(D) Manny Rutinel
(D) Shannon Bird
45%↓
30%
30%
30%
State Senate Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
80%
20%
State House Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
95%
5%
April 12, 2009 10:13 PM UTC
31 Comments
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Democrats won’t be in power forever, so now might be a good time to turn the redistricting process over to a nonpartisan committee. Plus, aren’t we the party that likes fair and balanced processes anyway?
I would love to see this set in statute to be done in a fair way. But I think key to that is that it puts a high priority on drawing districts to be competitive. I want to see DeGette and Lamborn having to re-earn their seats every 2 years.
The ‘pubs know how to take advantage of such naive willingness to go along. Are you so eager to let the lion into your house?
I don’t want to see the Dems just go all out like Tom DeLay or the Colorado ‘pubs and just do whatever they can to ensure Dem majorities for the next few decades, but allowing those weasels a significant say in the name of fairness is sheer foolishness.
Imagine if all the districts had been competitive in this last election – we’ld have 100% Dems in Congress.
of the state, how exactly???
I’ve always been curious about the “we need competitive districts” argument. If every district goes 51-49, how is that good? Leaving 49% of the country pissed after a pres election is one thing…doing it after every congressional election is another, IMO…
it’s worth pointing out that “draw competitive districts” is logically equivalent to “maximize the number of people who wish someone else represented them in Congress.”
i have one thing to say to Mr.May
…to make DeGette’s district or Lamborn’s district competitive. Denver is dominated by Dems; CS is dominated by Republicans. That’s just the way it is until people start switching their registrations or are swamped by new residents of the other party.
Combine CD-1 & CD-6 and split them in a way to make them both competitive. And if we’re left with Polis & Lamborn having safe seats but the rest are competitive, that would still be better.
I seem to recall someone explaining that you can’t split Denver like that. And it would probably take putting Pueblo into CD-5 (and therefore out of CD-3) to make that competitive, which would probably also make CD-3 a lot more Republican in the process.
I agree with the principle of more competitive districts. But Jamba’s right, Denver is liberal and Colorado Springs is conservative, so those districts, however they’re drawn, are going to remain safe for their respective parties.
Right now I like how the federal districts are drawn. They make geographic sense, and in fact 3 of them (CD3, 4, and 7) are competitive now. Given that some pundits believe there are only about 40 (IIRC) or so competitive districts across the country, having almost half of ours that way is doing good.
Besides, as I stated above, the ‘pubs have acted in bad faith on this when they were in power. They’ll learn the lesson to not be such jerks only if they are beaten at their own game.
While I completely agree with the desire to take politics out of districting, drawing intentionally competitive districts is the opposite — it’s intentionally putting politics back in to the redistricting process.
Here’s that it comes down to:
Goal: Maximize the number of people who are happy with their representation in Congress.
Assumption: A two-party hyper-partisan election, in which all democrats are happy is the democrat wins, and all republicans are happy if the republican wins. Yeah, I know… but we don’t have the data necessary to do better.
Constraints: Districts must have approximately equal population. Districts must be contiguous. There needs to be some kind of limit on the sum of the circumferences of the districts… this prevents solutions like Georgia’s famous gerrymandering in which a narrow strip of land from Atlanta all the way to Augusta was included in a district so that blacks and liberals in both cities could be included in a single 90% dem district, leaving most of the rest of the state for Republicans. (I’m ignoring constraints from the Voting Rights Act, because IIRC they don’t apply anywhere in Colorado.)
Mathematicians and computer scientists know how to solve this problem. Hand the computer voting history for each precinct in the state over the past census period, and various optimization techniques (e.g., simulated annealing, genetic algorithms, etc… possibly even linear programming) will quickly reach a near-optimal solution.
In a state with 2 reps, in which 50% of people lived in the north half and were all liberal democrats, and 50% lived in the south and were all conservative republicans, there are two general strategies. You could divide the state into north and south, and 100% of the people would be basically happy. Or you could divide it east and west, get two very competitive districts, and piss off half the state.
Yes, I know the argument that having competitive districts means having better representatives… but it’s also been proven again and again that districts with one majority party can and do elect people from the minority party when they are sufficiently independent and listen to their districts… and some of our best congresspeople come from safe districts, as well. I just don’t see a strong correlation in practice. And I say that as a liberal living in Colorado Springs; I don’t begrudge the ignorant majority here their representation.
Unilateral disarmament is stupid. When Texas, Georgia and Florida seat their non-partisan redistricting commission, then and only then should states with Democratic controlled legislatures and Democratic governors even begin to entertain such ideas. Until then…not just “no.”, but “Hell No!”.
the credibility problem is insurmountable. A legislator who wants to propose something that may have long-term collective benefits but hurts one party in the immediate time frame better belong to the party being hurt, or better remain silent while privately beseeching those of the party being hurt to come forward and bite the bullet for the greater good. But you don’t get to offer to sacrifice the other party’s interests for the greater good! If May wants to be noble, he has to do it on his dime. Sacrificing the other guy just isn’t all that noble.
…are you urging a Dem legislator to join May in pushing this good idea?
But if I were, I would urge some backroom bargaining, in which Dems, acknowledging that this would be good for the state in the long run but bad for their party in the short run, approach ‘Pubs, saying that they’d like to get ‘er done, but, since it’s a political gift to the ‘Pubs, how about a little loving in return, on some issue or issues? Vote trading, unfortunately (IMHO), is unconstitutional in Colorado (an anti-pork measure which also an anti-mutual-accomodation measure, whether on behalf of legislators or their constituents), so it could not be explicit, but I suspect that it could be done.
I believe in working toward the greater good, but not sacrificing your ability to continue to work for the greater good in the process, unless its a really, really great greater good that you’re working for at the moment. Got it?
But I think I understand you better now.
except to implement a constitution that protects minorities from the tyranny of majorities. Gerrymandering is a subversion of democracy that, as a general rule, does nothing to protect minorities from the tyranny of majorities, and so is bad on all counts. Of course, it’s less bad when it favors those I agree with, and I prefer to set it straight when it is favoring those I disagree with, but there’s always room for trading your way to happiness. I’m a big fan of well-managed market mechanisms, and think we need more of them, not less, in our governmental processes.
With any luck, I’ve re-muddied the waters for you! 🙂
“a constitution that protects minorities from the tyranny of majorities, and majorities from the tyranny of minorities with possession of the majority of the power.” It’s more about power differentials than numerical differentials.
Would be to create a bill that does this and provides public funding for races. You can vote trade if it’s done by creating a combined bill.
seems to be getting more and more visible. They really had it together for a while; the party recovered from being essentially out of power to controlling a good part of the state government… they did that by agreeing to move past personal problems and be the party of good government and standing up for people.
Now things start to swing the other way. This is when Democrats decide to air their personality disputes in public, and as a result, the public sees a party that wants to bicker and fight rather than one focused on solving problems. It’s too bad, really.
For what it’s worth, Gordon is the ultimate believer among Colorado politicians in a clean political process, a government that serves its people, and doing away with the worst side of politics. If that gets in the way of ramming through a legislative agenda sometimes, so be it.
(That said, Gordon is dead wrong about drawing competitive districts.)
Come 2012 Doug Lamborn will be the only Colorado Republican holding a congressional seat in Washington….
there is no such thing as a fair and nonpartisan reditricting process. Redistricting by its very nature is one of the most political processes in the American system, and no legislature, no governor, no “fair and balanced” commission, no judge, no jury, nobody can take the partisan politics out of it.
there is such a thing as “better.” (and worse).
Colorado, not so oddly, has most of the same requirements for redistricting as Iowa has. The only difference is the composition of the redistricting body. Each requires equal population first, compactness second, geopolitical boundary following third… Are we seeing a trend, here?
So let’s look at our districts:
Today’s shiny new Cook PVI numbers (PDF) allow some kind of insight. (I’ll include 2006 PVI’s, too, because they show a trend; Colorado had 4 of the 50 largest swings toward D partisan voting in the latest PVI update…)
These are in district order.
CO (2004): D+18, D+8, R+6, R+9, R+16, R+10, D+2
CO (2008): D+21, D+11, R+5, R+6, R+14, R+8, D+4
CO-01 and CO-06 are pretty much unsolvable partisan districts according to the laws governing redistricting; they are compact and follow geopolitical boundaries as closely as possible while distributing population equally.
Now how do we compare to Iowa?
IA (2004): D+5, D+7, D+1, EVEN, R+8
IA (2008): D+5, D+7, D+1, EVEN, R+9
In 2008, excluding our very partisan metro areas, only CO-02 fell outside of the partisan swing of the Iowa districts – and it was within that range using the 2004 PVI while CO-06 fell outside that range…
Considering the strong D trend in Colorado, the only tweaking I would recommend might be to shift some of CO-07 into CO-06, some of CO-02 into CO-07, and some of CO-04 or CO-03 into CO-02. And that might “overbalance” things in favor of the Democrats – assuming we’re looking for long-term balance.
Not bad for a “broken” system.
Connect CD1 and CD5 with a shoestring of precincts. Peel off enough CD1 into CD6 (and more moving down the bench of realignments) to make the populations more equal.
Thunderdome!
It’s against the legal guidelines for drawing districts. Creating a central Denver district creates the most compact and geopolitical boundary aligned district possible, and so it gets legal priority over gerrymandered districts. Same for CO-05 (though there’s some flexibility there as the district covers the Arkansas River Valley and other outlying areas in the Springs “neighborhood”).
If you want competition in some areas of the state, you’re going to have to advocate for some kind of ranked voting system (IRV, etc.) as we’ve discussed in the past.