Colorado is undertaking a once in a decade redistricting process which will determine voting boundaries for both state and congressional elections. In the past these efforts have been subject to claims of gerrymandering (producing boundaries that favor one political party over another), but this time around two ballot referendums have been passed that require the state to set up two independent commissions (one tasked with Colorado democratic redistricting and other with state) that are composed of 12 person panels that are made up of 4 Democrats, 4 Republicans and 4 unaffiliated persons where none of which can be legislators, political candidates, party officials or lobbyists.
This, it is hoped, will result in Colorado democratic redistricting because in the past state legislators were responsible for the test and it was argued that the process was not entirely fair from a political standpoint. In the past, elected officials were tasked with, or responsible for choosing the people that were tasked with, drawing the boundaries on maps that determined the likelihood of their party gaining or holding seats leading to an irreconcilable conflict of interest. Currently most states allow their legislatures to control the redistricting process which has led to the practice of purposely drawing the lines for election boundaries to favour the political fortunes of one party or another.
While Colorado did not have the worst examples of this type of practice, there were cases in which there were significant disputes about new boundaries with the last three of four such attempts leading to a stalemate on boundaries that a district court judge had to intervene to make the final determination. The new system is designed to offer procedural fairness and was established by a bipartisan committee of former legislators that worked on redistricting reform. The goal was to use non-partisan staff to draw the initial maps, in order to avoid conflict between political parties, and to also give unaffiliated voters the chance to have their say about the process.
The redistricting maps will be drawn focusing on the constitutional criteria that define how voters can be best represented. Once the maps are created they will be open to public feedback with at least three public hearings held in each current district. Based on the feedback, staff will then create a new plan and offer it to the commission who can suggest amendments. In order to be adopted the commission must produce a super-majority of votes that includes at least two unaffiliated commissioners. All of the meetings held are public and the redistricting commission is eager to receive feedback from the general public about the process.
