Shame on Texas Republicans who engaged in one of the dirtiest political tricks America has ever seen — redistricting before the decennial census with the goal of giving Republicans a better chance of winning in five congressional districts held by Democratic incumbents.
How successful the gerrymandering actually was remains to be seen — Republicans are polling poorly in the Lone Star State, perhaps in part because of their blatant attempt to cheat voters out of their voices. But one thing we know is that their little stunt is terrible for America’s democracy which allows voters to select their representatives. President Donald Trump helped push for the redistricting, and Republicans in Congress like Speaker of the House Mike Johnson are relishing this opportunity to pick up seats during a difficult midterm election.
After Texas opened the floodgates of blatantly political midterm redistricting, other states followed suit. Unfortunately, the U.S. Supreme Court has refused to intervene, allowing these political power grabs to take place in California and Texas while rejecting a similar measure in Missouri.
In Colorado, Democrats attempted to respond to the Texas-steal with a gerrymandering effort of their own. The redistricting would have had to go to voters because Colorado voters etched a nonpartisan redistricting commission into the Constitution ahead of the 2020 Census.
The Colorado Supreme Court struck down several proposed ballot questions as unconstitutional. Before the court ruled, however, Republicans responded to the proposals by filing a ballot measure to prevent the gerrymandering in Colorado — doing the right thing for the wrong reasons.
The Republicans’ ballot measure to prevent Democrats from doing what they started is now The amendment simply requires any redistricting attempt coming outside of the regular 10-year census schedule to also go through the voter-approved independent redistricting commission. Ultimately, any map would also have to be approved by the Colorado Supreme Court and meet the requirements set out by voters in 2018. We feel like this is a common-sense rule, given our long support for a redistricting process that is based not on protecting incumbents or protecting political power but on creating competitive districts.
However, we also want to point out that the system worked as intended this time — the Colorado Supreme Court rejected partisan-motivated redistricting because our Constitution now explicitly bans it. If Amendment 86 were to fail, voters can rest assured that future efforts at early redistricting would face similar opposition, but it’s not a guarantee.
The redistricting process after the 2020 census resulted in one new extremely competitive district. Congressional District 8 is proving to be one of the nation’s most evenly split districts, and voters will decide this year between incumbent Republican Rep. Gabe Evans and Democratic challenger former state Rep. Manny Rutinel. Colorado voters deserve more districts like this, not fewer — places where competitive elections keep politicians working hard and responsive to what voters want.
Ironically, the partisan gerrymandering in Texas also made districts more competitive, but only those that were held by Democrats.
The result has been an intense battle in those districts for the newly competitive seats. We’d urge voters not to reward bad behavior in Texas, but that’s a bit outside our readership area.
Amendment 86 was funded in part by a $250,000 donation from a PAC tied to U.S. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson. We wouldn’t have as bad a taste in our mouths about his efforts to block Democrats’ push to redistrict Colorado if Johnson wasn’t actively celebrating the chance to pick up five seats in Texas.
America’s democracy does not exist to dole out power to political parties. Partisan gerrymandering must end somewhere, and we hope more states adopt nonpartisan independent redistricting committees to prevent abuse in the future. For now, Colorado will lead the way, making our system a little less corruptible with a yes vote on Amendment 86.
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