Colorado voters would be asked to change the way congressional and legislative districts are drawn every decade under a measure narrowly approved Monday by a Senate panel.
The Senate State Affairs Committee voted 4-3 for the measure that seeks to put redistricting in the hands of the legislature’s nonpartisan staff.
The resolution takes aim at one of the legislature’s most political functions. Each decade, lawmakers draw new boundaries for congressional and legislative districts using updated census numbers.
In recent years, Colorado’s process has been marred by partisan feuding. Republicans complained that the commission that draws up statehouse districts favored Democrats.
And statehouse Democrats were rolled in the waning days of the 2003 legislative session when Republican leaders engineered a remapping of congressional districts, giving themselves an edge in the new 7th Congressional District.
Monday’s measure still needs to win 24 votes in the Senate and 44 in the House in order to appear on this fall’s ballot – a difficult task in the waning days of the session.
Senate Majority Leader Ken Gordon, D-Denver, sponsor of the resolution, acknowledged time is running out, but he said the change is necessary to improve the public’s trust in government.
“The problem with having the legislature do redistricting is like having a judge be the judge in his own case,” said Gordon, who is running for Colorado secretary of state this fall.
“We’re too interested in it,” he said. “And everybody can see that, and it brings the whole General Assembly into disrepute when they see us fighting over things that have nothing to do with helping the people of Colorado and everything to do with narrow, selfish, partisan interests.”
Gordon said Iowa has successfully delegated its redistricting to nonpartisan staff.
Still, even lawmakers who said they are concerned about the existing process were not convinced that Gordon was offering a way to fix the process.
“I’m wondering if it’s unrealistic to keep politics out of a very political process,” said Sen. Doug Lamborn, R-Colorado Springs.
Staff writer Mark P. Couch can be reached at 303-820-1794 or mcouch@denverpost.com.
