Re: “Supreme Court gives Colorado a green light to fix redistricting,” July 5 editorial.
Thanks for drawing attention to the importance of the U.S. Supreme Courtap decision on redistricting and recommending the use of an independent commission for both congressional redistricting as well as state legislative redistricting.
The editorial correctly pointed out that when there is an independent commission, it is less likely that the dominant party in a state will gerrymander districts to disproportionately favor that party and create noncompetitive districts. But as independent commissions, even in Colorado, are usually comprised of party representatives, they are still battling over computer-generated outcomes favoring one party or the other.
Here are two additional suggestions to effectively eliminate partisan redistricting:
1. Emphasize the Colorado constitutional criterion that districts be maximally compact and contiguous and de-emphasize the preservation of county boundaries. This alone would effectively eliminate partisan redistricting and minimize the significant costs regarding redistricting because of the constraint this would place on redistricting plans.
2. Require the work to be done by legislative staff rather than by any elected officials, thus minimizing the objective to protect incumbents of any party. This is the Iowa model.
Bruce Fogarty, Colorado Springs
This letter was published in the July 12 edition.Regardless of who draws the lines for legislative districts, there will be dissatisfaction with the outcome unless there are publicly agreed-upon priorities from the very start.
We can and should take political voting patterns out of the decision process, but that is just one point in a long list of considerations.
As a young staffer in the state House years ago, I had the opportunity to participate in the redistricting process. Five minutes in, the decisions started: Are the county lines more important than the physical barrier of a mountain, for instance? In rural areas, how do you factor in access between the districtap communities? Do you try to keep all of the farming communities together or mix them up with the urban areas? Do things like longtime high school football rivalries matter? The list goes on and on.
We citizens don’t live in neatly compact groups that align with … pretty much anything. Thus priorities have to be set. And remember that there can only be one No. 1.
Randi Doeker, Denver
This letter was published in the July 12 edition.
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