Don’t expect Colorado to join the redistricting arms race

Colorado has eight congressional districts. Currently, the seats are split between four Democrats and four Republicans. Drawing a new map that gives Democrats an advantage is possible, said Rebecca Theobald, but not without sacrificing quality.

“There are ways to do it, I can imagine,” said Theobald, a geography professor and director of GeoCivics at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs. “But it would be very ugly and would make no sense in terms of how you put people together.”

Colorado’s current congressional map received an A rating from Princeton University’s Gerrymandering Project. States with the worst ratings include Texas, Florida and Illinois.

Mid-decade redistricting is rare. Republican state lawmakers in Texas justified the extraordinary move by referencing a U.S. Department of Justice letter that said four of the state’s current districts are racially gerrymandered. Previously, Texas Republicans insisted the maps weren’t gerrymandered and were reluctant to draw new maps. They changed their tune when President Donald Trump intervened and asked for more Republican seats, an indication that the party’s greatest motivation for redistricting is delivering for the president.

Democrats in Texas and across the country decried the redistricting as purely partisan gerrymandering and anti-democratic. “Everyone who cares about our democracy must mobilize against this illegal map,” said Rep. Greg Casar, a Democrat whose district includes parts of Austin and San Antonio.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, a New York Democrat, last week met with legislators in Texas who are trying to stop the Republicans from expanding their party advantage.

California’s Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom, plans to move ahead with his own redistricting plan if Texas approves the new map, according to The Texas Tribune. Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell, who represents part of the Bay Area, said Newsom’s plan could net six seats for Democrats.

The tit-for-tat between Texas and California has set the stage for a potential gerrymandering arms race. Political scientist Lee Drutman estimated that Republicans will probably net nine seats through mid-decade redistricting in Texas and other states.

Texas is better positioned than most blue states in terms of quickly drawing new maps. The impediments to mid-decade redistricting in Colorado are common in other Democrat-led states. In California, New Jersey, New York and Washington — states that could redistrict their way to more Democratic reps in Congress — there are “nonpartisan backstops against partisan gerrymanders,” according to a recent Semafor analysis. No such guardrails exist in Republican-led states like Texas and Missouri.

Colorado is one of 15 states with a Democratic “trifecta,” meaning the party controls the governor’s mansion and both houses of the state legislature. Both of Colorado’s U.S. Senators are also Democrats. However, the Democratic dominance is not reflected in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Out of those 15 trifecta states, Colorado is one of two states that has an even number of Democratic and Republican members of Congress in the House of Representatives (Colorado and Minnesota have four of each). Many of the Democratic trifecta states don’t have any Republican members of Congress at all, another reason Democrats would have a hard time keeping up with Republican gerrymandering — many blue states are already maxed out.

But considering the prevalence of Democratic leadership in Colorado, is it fair to wonder if Republicans are overrepresented in the state’s congressional delegation?

“I think actually the congressional delegation represents the larger aspects of Colorado very well,” Theobald said. She called Colorado “an excellent microcosm of the country” in that Democratic voters tend to live in urban areas while Republican voters are in more rural parts of the state.

”I think it's more of a purple state than people imagine,” she said.

If Colorado’s leaders were to change their minds and endorse mid-decade redistricting, they would face an uphill battle.

One option would be for the legislature to change Amendment Y of the state constitution, which voters approved in 2018. Amendment Y took the power of redistricting away from state lawmakers and gave it to an independent commission. Changing that amendment would require approval from two-thirds of both the state House and Senate, meaning at least a few Republicans would have to sign on.

“Those amendments were voted on by the people,” Theobald said. “And so changing those would really be in violation of what the people wanted in terms of their redistricting for Colorado.”

The statehouse could also refer a ballot measure to the voters. Or, if the voters of Colorado decided themselves that they want their lawmakers to draw congressional maps again, they could amend the state constitution via statewide ballot initiative, or include an initiative to repeal Amendment Y (the deadline to get an initiative on the 2025 ballot has already passed). A ballot initiative amending the constitution needs to pass by at least 55%. A repeal of the amendment requires only a simple majority.

Although changes to Colorado’s maps are improbable, Theobald hopes more people begin to understand how redistricting — and gerrymandering — works. For a long time, she said, the map-making process was inaccessible or downright clandestine.

“The people who were drawing these maps were sometimes in locked hotel rooms and looking at these maps. And maybe if you were a state legislator, you might be invited in to take a look at how your district was shaping up,” she said. “But there was very little transparency in this process.”