Re: “Trump and Peters declare America’s democracy dead,” July 12 editorial

Your recent piece on Tina Peters read less like measured journalism and more like a coordinated effort to smear a county clerk who dared question the machinery of elections — while a 70-year-old lady spent over 600 days in jail.

It began with the April 6, 2021, Mesa County municipal election. Before official results were tallied at 7 p.m., a candidate received an eerily precise victory call from her campaign manager. Not psychic hotline stuff — just enough to raise eyebrows for the clerk responsible for certifying the results. Tina Peters started asking questions. Suspicion isn’t a crime when your job is ensuring elections are verifiably trustworthy.

She was preserving federal records per her oath (Supremacy Clause). Courts rejected full immunity, but the state-federal tension remains. In 2026, the Colorado Court of Appeals upheld her convictions but threw out the sentence, ruling the judge improperly punished her protected speech. A 9-0 Supreme Court precedent backs this: You can’t crank up penalties simply because someone won’t stop talking. Notably, she was never charged with breaching or destroying records. She was fulfilling preservation duties during the “Trusted Build” update.

Elections thrive on verifiable trust. Questioning the process — especially when oddities appear —shouldn’t turn someone into Public Enemy #1. The Denver Post can keep its narrative, but courts and federal complaints keep revealing real tensions worth honest debate. With transparency and scrutiny, we can strengthen trust in our elections moving forward. Brighter chapters are possible.

Brad Hackman, Lakewood

So Trump declares that mail-in ballots and voting machines are rigged so Democrats can win elections. Why hasn’t anyone confronted Trump that he doesn’t declare the same thing when Republicans win, including himself?!  And do the MAGA people not see the irony in that?!  I wonder if Tina Peters can look herself in the mirror without seeing her nose grow while continuing these lies and atrocities.

Marcia Murphy, Centennial

This is in response to the lengthy, excellent editorial on the almost completely flawless way that CO runs its election. It was very well explained.

But I am still confused as to why everyone seems to ignore the fact that in Mesa County, President Trump won 68% of the vote. How is that not critical to proving that Tina Peters is nothing but a scam artist. What was she looking for? How could that percentage be nothing but nearly total victory for Trump when we now call a 15-point victory a near landslide? She wanted to be MAGA royalty and thanks to our governor, she has now achieved it.

Judith Pettibone, Denver

The editorials published by The Post, while reliably expressing an opinion left of center, can also on occasion, reflect a strategic pragmatism.

Sunday’s offering was no such occasion.

The bloated-font headline, “Trump and Peters declare America’s democracy dead,” reeks of the leering hyperbolic headlines of social media that rarely deliver on their promise but scream anyway. Using the dense and over-the-top Trump post on his Truth Social (that’s so unlike him), re: rigged elections as a jumping-off point, The Post makes an enormous leap of faith in the headline that he declared “democracy dead”, but he did no such thing.

He didn’t then, and as far as a Google search goes, he never has. What he did was chum for outrage by saying voting machines were rigged, and you bit and delivered, big time. His attempts to undermine public confidence in elections are tired and ineffective, even to supporters like myself.

Our democracy will survive, even continue to thrive, despite who occupies the White House.

If, as you asserted, you are “exhausted” with countering these stale and benign accusations, here’s a virtuous piece of advice: stop doing that. And while you’re at it, stop mimicking the trolling websites on social media with desperate headline-hype to attract clicks. It’s beneath you.

Jon Pitt, Golden

It����ap confusing. Just last month, President Trump and many of his media supporters made (unfounded) claims of fraud and predicted the imminent collapse of the electoral system as vote counting in California stretched to days after primary Election Day and his preferred candidate for Los Angeles for mayor fell short of the final ballot. This month, I haven’t heard a peep about the fallibility of vote counting as the GOP primary election stretched to nine days and the more establishment gubernatorial candidate lost her early lead to an outsider. One might infer there was an ulterior motive in claiming fraud in the first place.

Randy Livingston, Denver

Rampant fraud did plague Colorado’s primary election, just not how Trump and Tina Peters might claim. Secretary of State Jena Griswold’s office failed to get its updated election instructions posted clearly on all county election office websites. Consequently, an estimated 75% of voters were not officially informed, in a timely and non-partisan way, how to obtain and vote a Unity Party ballot. Only Republican or Democratic ballots and their instructions were automatically mailed to voters in the June primary.

Additionally, news media such as KUNC, KUSA, and the Colorado Sun, excluded Unity Party candidates from forums or voter guides where “all candidates for the same office” were required to be invited. That had the “effect of favoring…a group of candidates”, namely Democrats and Republicans, in violation of IRS or FCC regulations. So, the election was not “free and fair.” Attorney General Phil Weiser is responsible for enforcing rules to ensure “fair” elections, but he and Marx benefited from an “unfair” election.

Had voters been properly informed, the “fair” election results might have favored Kirkmeyer. That speculation is unknowable. However, claims of election fraud due to misrepresentation or omission of critical acts are easily knowable and provable. They’re neither “outlandish claims” nor “isolated incidents”.

Should Weiser and Griswold be disqualified? Should the election be nullified and run again – legally and fairly? Do violating news outlets need to lose their tax-exempt status or FCC licenses? Colorado’s “gold standard” election integrity is at stake. The primary election needs an unbiased investigation and accountability.

Jeff Peckman, Englewood

Time to re-evaluate the wolf reintroduction

Re: “On the front lines,” July 12 news story

Having read many articles regarding the wolf reintroduction program in Colorado, I am wondering if this program is producing any positive results. It seems that millions of dollars are being spent on hiring 18 range riders, compensating ranchers and farmers for their loss of livestock and herding dogs, as well as the cost of obtaining and tracking wolves.

Now, after so many years since the initial reintroduction program began, have we as taxpayers and interested parties gained any real advantages from this program? It seems to me that the problems encountered have overwhelmed any potential advantages. Also, why doesn’t Colorado Parks and Wildlife conduct a study to evaluate this program? All concerned, taxpayers, supporters, opponents and government officials need to know if this program is worth all the effort that has been put into it.

James Sebben, Minturn

I read with dismay the numerous articles commenting on the hardship ranchers must endure because of the introduction of wolves to Colorado. The default position in all of these articles is that ranchers have more rights than other people, in that they must be compensated for losses due to predation.

It would be useful to augment this point of view by exploring the premise that cattle ranching is a good thing and must be protected. To me, it is the same as dog meat farming, at one time prevalent in Asian countries.  There is fundamentally no difference between farming dogs for meat and raising cattle.  The only cultural difference is that Western cultures revere dogs but consider cattle a meal in waiting.

Just as dog meat farmers are abandoning their former way of making a living and developing new livelihoods, the same can happen to cattle ranchers.  I find their practices equally abhorrent and unworthy of protection.

Claire Moulden, Thornton

No to gerrymandering, but Colorado is a long way from competitive districts

Re: “Colorado Supreme Court just saved us the shame of making a mistake the size of Texas or California,” July 12 opinion column

I agree with Krista Kafer when she says in her Sunday op-ed that Coloradans should leave the process of redistricting to the newly created Independent Congressional Redistricting Commission.

But I don’t agree that their actions thus far have been true to their mission. The wording is clear enough. “The 12-member bipartisan commission is obligated by the state Constitution to maximize the number of competitive districts and may not protect a political party or an incumbent.” But then, as Krista states, “The Commission created four Democratic-majority seats, three Republican-majority seats, and one competitive district.” That����ap right. One competitive district. How is that “maximizing the number of competitive districts?

Colorado’s congressional districts are not competitive. They generally still favor candidates from one party over another. Just look at the data from the 2024 election. While Gabe Evans, a Republican, won Congressional District 8 by just about 2,500 votes and Jeff Hurd, also a Republican, won Congressional District 3 by just about 19,800 votes, the rest of our districts clearly favored one party over another.

Jeff Crank, a Republican, won Congressional District 5 by 50,000 votes. Lauren Boebert, a Republican, won District 4 by 52,000 votes. Brittany Petterson, a Democrat, won District 7 by 60,000 votes. Jason Crow, a Democrat, won District 6 by 70,000 votes. Joe Neguse, a Democrat, won District 2 by 164,000 votes. And the venerable Diana DeGette, a Democrat, won District 1 by 190,000 votes!

Based on the data, the State of Colorado cannot say that it����ap done a good job of making our congressional elections more competitive because they have not. There is a lot more work to do.

Mike Dubrovich, Parker

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Colorado’s current congressional district map was drawn up by the Independent Congressional Redistricting Commission and approved by the Colorado Supreme Court in 2021. The 12-member bipartisan commission, created in 2018 by a majority (71%) of Colorado voters, is obligated by the state Constitution to maximize the number of competitive districts and may not protect a political party or an incumbent. The commission created four Democratic-majority seats, three Republican-majority seats, and one competitive district.

Responding to President Donald Trump’s putsch, I mean push, to eradicate opponents’ representation in Congress, Colorado Democrats proposed ballot initiatives for November that would circumvent the bipartisan commission, initiate mid-decade redistricting, and approve gerrymandered maps for the 2028 and 2030 elections that would eradicate all but one Republican-majority district. Republicans counterpunched by proposing initiatives to favor their party in all but three districts.

In each case, sidestepping the voter-approved commission would require multiple actions. Since the Colorado Constitution forbids piling multiple subjects into a ballot initiative, advocates broke the steps into different proposals and added language stating each must pass for all to take effect. So while they appeared to be separate single-subject initiatives, they acted as a single multi-subject proposal. The Supreme Court, however, saw through this clever ruse and ruled all five proposals violated the state constitution’s single subject rule.

Supreme courts in Utah and Virginia have done likewise by abrogating attempts by legislators to gerrymander maps to gain seats for their respective parties. But pro-democracy Republican state lawmakers in Indiana, Kansas, and South Carolina didn’t need the courts to do the right thing, they joined Democratic lawmakers and stopped efforts by Republican colleagues to eradicate the small number of Democratic congressional seats in those states.

Since then, Trump has retaliated against the Indiana senators who opposed gerrymandering by recruiting opponents to run against them in the primary. Five of these principled Republican senators lost to MAGA challengers.

Of course, gerrymandering is not new. The term “gerrymandering” goes back to 1812, but the pernicious practice has been around since representatives discovered they didn’t need good ideas and good character to win if they could manipulate district boundary lines.

Back in the 2021-2022 round of redistricting, long before Trump’s recent gerrymander push, New Mexico, Illinois, Oklahoma and other states gerrymandered their maps to eliminate districts winnable by the minority party.

Last year, the unethical practice gained steam when Republicans realized Trump’s rising unpopularity could cost them control of the U.S. House of Representatives in 2026. Since then, eight Republican-majority states and one Democratic-majority state have succeeded in redrawing district lines in the majority’s favor.

Perhaps these politicians sleep at night by telling themselves that the ends justify the means. They didn’t start the fight; the other party did. They didn’t really disenfranchise their fellow Americans, who can still vote for a losing candidate and get an “I voted” sticker. Might makes right, doesn’t it?

To paraphrase my hero former Rep. Liz Cheney, “There will come a day when Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonor will remain.”

Krista Kafer is a Sunday Denver Post columnist.

To send a letter to the editor about this article, submit online or check out our guidelines for how to submit by email or mail.

The state’s newest district — covering a Front Range area spanning from Greeley down to the northern suburbs of Denver — has seen only two elections. The first went to a Democrat, the second to a Republican. And both victories hinged on very thin margins.

The Republican victor in 2024 was Gabe Evans, of Fort Lupton, who is hoping to turn his freshman term in Congress into at least two more years in office. His challenger, fresh off a resounding victory in the Democratic primary last Tuesday, is state Rep. Manny Rutinel of Commerce City.

And in the middle of it all are the political prognosticators and party operatives, desperate to decipher what voters’ choices this November in Colorado’s most competitive congressional race might say about future trendlines in the electorate at large.

“There’s no doubt this is a race that will attract national money,” said Erin Covey, who analyzes congressional races as U.S. House editor for the Cook Political Report.

Cook lists the 8th District among .

While the typical campaign issues will likely be prominent in the race — immigration, healthcare and economic well-being among them — there are additional complications for the candidates to navigate this fall.

For Evans, 39, it’s President Donald Trump, a Republican whose . The president is particularly disliked in Colorado.

Cost of living continues to be a pressing issue, despite the fact the president campaigned on bringing down prices that spiked under his predecessor. And both Trump’s foreign policy — especially the war in Iran — and his immigration enforcement tactics have alienated voters across the political spectrum.

The more Democrats can link Evans to the president, the better for his opponent, said David Boian, a Democratic political strategist.

“Gabe Evans has been right there with Donald Trump — arm in arm,” he said. “That’s a huge liability for him.”

Rutinel, 31, can expect attempts to place him within the surging left corner of the Democratic Party, exemplified by the stunning primary victory Tuesday of democratic socialist Melat Kiros over 15-term U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette in the congressional district that covers Denver.

There is no doubt, said former Colorado Republican Party Chair Dick Wadhams, that campaign ads will highlight comments Kiros has recently made about 9/11, Israel’s legitimacy as a nation, and the deadly firebombing attack on Jews and others demonstrating in Boulder last year — an act she refused to call antisemitic.

Those statements, which drew rebukes from  and even some , could be used in an attempt to taint Rutinel’s campaign if he doesn’t sufficiently disavow Kiros. She’s one of a handful of far-left candidates who have toppled Democratic members of Congress in recent primaries.

“Her anti-semitism is palpable,” Wadhams said. “Everything she says will reflect on the Democrats statewide.”

Asked for Rutinel’s thoughts on Kiros, his campaign sent The Denver Post a statement from the candidate: “I believe that no terrorist attack is inevitable, whether that is 9/11 or the attack in Boulder,” Rutinel said. “Israel has a right to exist, and the Boulder attack was an antisemitic act of terrorism, and antisemitism has no place in this country.”

Challenges on the trail

Boian’s advice to Rutinel would be that he “keeps his distance from Kiros,” given that the political composition of the 8th Congressional District — which was drawn by an independent commission to be competitive — is a far cry from that of deep-blue Denver. The candidate, he said, needs to focus on the voters in the district who have grown tired of Trump and his administration’s policies.

“The key to winning this race is unaffiliated voters,” Boian said.

Unaffiliated voters in the 8th District outnumber both Republicans and Democrats combined — by a factor of more than 2-to-1, according to state election data.

Covey, with the Cook Political Report, thinks Trump might be a bigger problem for Evans than Kiros might be for Rutinel, namely because he is the president and has a far greater impact on voters’ lives.

“Trump is going to be a real anchor on Evans,” she said.

For his part, Evans has attempted to create some daylight between himself and the president. He has , which have an outsized impact on farmers and ranchers. He also joined GOP lawmakers last year in expressing concern to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement about whether it was still prioritizing the deportation of criminals.

Whether that will be enough to allay concerns among voters in the 8th — Colorado’s most heavily Latino district, with roughly 40% of voters identifying that way — is yet to be seen. But nothing will go either candidate’s way without a big megaphone and the money to keep it sounding.

While Evans has the advantage in fundraising — with $3.5 million cash on hand as of June 10, nearly four times as much as his opponent — Rutinel’s success in attracting cash is notable, Covey said. It helped him fend off primary challengers, one thing Evans lacked this time around.

But it’s the outside money that could well have the most impact on the race. It factored big in the Democratic primary — with more than $8 million poured into the race either on behalf of or against Rutinel and his opponent, former state Rep. Shannon Bird. Rutinel defeated Bird by about 30 percentage points.

Already, the pro-Republican super PAC Congressional Leadership Fund has to the Denver media market for advertising in this fall’s election cycle. On the other side, the House Majority PAC plans in Denver market ad buys on behalf of Democratic House candidates this fall.

Because Rutinel is the newer face on the national stage, his challenge will be solidifying his image before others do it for him. He’s off to a rough start, Wadhams said, after on several issues on which he used to stand farther left.

In an interview with a five years ago, Rutinel called animal agriculture a “horrific, exploitive industry.” He doesn’t say that anymore. Rutinel also once opposed fracking, a position he said in a May primary debate he no longer held.

Agriculture and ranching, along with oil and gas development, are major pillars of the 8th District’s economy outside its urban areas.

“To attack the very nature of the 8th District — it goes beyond just adjusting his position,” Wadhams said. “He’s gone from being a vegan to loving beef. He’s a chameleon.”

Boian, the Democratic strategist, said voters aren’t going to focus on candidate positions that may have evolved over the years.

“I think where the race is going is strictly to people’s pocketbooks,” he said. “Can they get to the store and get food for their kids?”

Evans has his own background story “to clean up,” Boian said, referencing an published last summer into multiple generations of Evans’ family, in which the publication alleged that Evans had misrepresented his family’s immigration story.

Compelling personal stories

Ultimately, Wadhams said, both candidates have “very compelling” personal stories to tell.

Rutinel is the son of a single mother who immigrated to the United States from the Dominican Republic. The candidate often talks about having to help her fill out applications for food assistance and Medicaid benefits when he was young.

Previously an economist for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Rutinel, who’s also an attorney, was appointed by a vacancy committee to the Colorado House in 2023 to represent a portion of Adams County and Commerce City. He was elected to his seat the following year.

Evans is the grandson of Mexican immigrants, and his grandfather became a U.S. citizen through his military service in World War II. He served a dozen years in the U.S. Army as a Black Hawk helicopter pilot, then nearly a decade as an Arvada police officer.

For Joe Petrocco, who helps run his family’s farm in Brighton and serves as president of the Colorado Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association, his vote will go to Evans in November.

Petrocco, 55, likes the Republican’s support for efforts to keep farmworkers’ wages in check. Past increases in federally mandated wages for H-2A workers, who are foreign nationals working in agriculture, have made it impossible for farms like his to compete with countries like Mexico, where he says workers are paid “not $20 an hour but $20 a day.”

“He’s helping make us profitable again,” Petrocco said.

He also credits Evans for helping introduce the bipartisan last year. The bill seeks to reform the country’s asylum system and provide a path for workers who are in the country unlawfully to obtain legal status.

“He’s a Latino man and he respects his heritage,” Petrocco said.

Abby Hicks, a physical education teacher who lives in Mead, said Rutinel is the “real deal.” His rags-to-riches story appeals to her, and she appreciates his focus on bringing costs down — something he addressed as recently as Tuesday night at his election watch party in Commerce City.

Hicks, 44, said many of her students at Mead High School don’t see themselves represented by the older generations that still dominate politics in Colorado.

“He’s different from all the other politicians you meet,” she said of Rutinel. “He’s so eager to listen and learn — in today’s politics, we’re missing that.”

Bird conceded to Rutinel before 7:45 p.m., about the same time that the Associated Press called the race for Rutinel. Rutinel was leading nearly 62% to 34% over Bird, who herself formerly served in the Colorado House, as of early Wednesday afternoon.

“Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much,” Rutinel, 31, said to an excited crowd of around 100 people gathered at Las Dos Americas Tortilleria in Commerce City. “Together we fought, and together we will flip this seat in November.”

He immediately targeted Evans, his opponent in November, in his speech to supporters, criticizing the Republican for backing Trump administration policies that resulted in cuts to social programs.

“In Congress, I will restore funding for Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act,” Rutinel said, before exchanging hugs with former U.S. Sen. Ken Salazar and former Denver Mayor Wellington Webb on a makeshift stage in the restaurant.

Evans sent out a press statement after Rutinel won, saying Democrats had chosen a “far-left, radical socialist, Mamdani-wanna-be extremist,” a reference to New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

Bird, 57, immediately threw her support to her Democratic opponent as she addressed supporters at the Legacy Ridge Grill in Westminster.

“This was never about any name on the ballot,” Bird told about 40 supporters Tuesday evening. “… We need more than anything to win this seat. Democrats must flip Congress.”

Evan Munsing, a Democratic candidate in the race who suspended his campaign in May, was garnering nearly 5% of the vote.

Colorado’s 8th District, a politically competitive swath of Weld, Adams and Larimer counties north of Denver, is listed by national election watchers, including the Cook Political Report, as among 18 congressional races in the country that .

Colorado election results for the 2026 primary

Rutinel had positioned himself to the left of Bird, a former colleague in the legislature, in an election cycle that has proven . It became an exceedingly expensive affair as outside groups poured in more than $5.3 million on behalf of Rutinel or against Bird, plus around $3 million to help Bird or hurt Rutinel, according to Federal Election Commission data posted as of Friday.

The campaigns themselves have pulled in a ton of cash. Rutinel had the lead in the money game, with $4.1 million raised as of June 10. Bird collected $2.2 million through then. Both continued reporting significant donations throughout the final month.

Evans, 39, who was unopposed in the GOP primary, has raised the most money in the field, with nearly $4.9 million collected in this election cycle as of June 10. The first-term congressman had nearly $3.5 million in cash on hand -- nearly three times what his two Democratic opponents had combined on that date -- giving him a warchest for the fall.

Taylor Martinez, a volunteer for the Rutinel campaign who lives in Adams County, said at the watch party Tuesday that he thought Rutinel would "blow (Evans) out of the water" in November.

At age 32, Martinez said it was time for someone of his generation to take a seat in Congress.

"We need fresh new faces in Congress," he said.

But a complicating factor may be that Evans, a freshman lawmaker, is still relatively new and youthful.

Rutinel had repeatedly accused Bird of having gone soft on President Trump's mass-deportation agenda when she was in the state House. Bird, meanwhile, had slammed Rutinel for voting for a state budget that included cuts to Medicaid when he was in the state House this spring.

The 8th Congressional District, when drawn by a redistricting commission at its inception a few years ago, is Colorado's most Latino district. Nearly 39% of its 722,000 or so residents identify that way, according to data from the 2021 Colorado redistricting effort. Both Evans and Rutinel are Latino.

So far, it's been a true swing district. Democrat Yadira Caraveo won it in a close race in 2022, and Evans defeated her in 2024 by just under 1 percentage point.

For now, knock Colorado out of the nationwide partisan redistricting wars kicked off by President Donald Trump as Republican- and Democratic-led states have jockeyed for an advantage by adopting new congressional maps.

The state Supreme Court concluded that the ballot measures, which would’ve temporary re-drawn maps for the 2028 and 2030 elections, violated the state’s requirement that ballot proposals encompass only a single subject. Three of the rejected ballot measures were backed by Democrats seeking to grow their congressional power in the state, while two more were backed by conservatives with similar aims for Republican candidates.

“Changing long-settled law by modifying the timing, frequency, criteria, and entity responsible for congressional redistricting represents a significant change beyond the proponents’ stated central purposes (of) … congressional redistricting by adopting a new temporary map,” Chief Justice Monica Márquez wrote in one of the opinions.

The single-subject requirement is intended to prevent voter confusion and “log-rolling,” meaning when a voter supports one part of a complex ballot initiative but not another.

In two opinions, the justices wrote that the various measures raised log-rolling concerns because they generally would’ve changed how maps are drawn while also instituting new maps in 2028 and 2030, in ways favorable to either Democrats or Republicans. The justices argued that a voter might want to change how districts are drawn overall but may not support the partisan map proposals in the upcoming elections, or vice versa.

In her opinion rejecting two of the ballot measures, Márquez wrote that each proposal “represents a seismic shift to Colorado’s longstanding redistricting process enshrined in the state constitution.” The other opinion was authored by Justice Richard L. Gabriel.

The rulings were welcomed by conservative groups, while the campaign that filed the Democratic ballot measures called the outcome “a legal setback over a technicality.”

Democrats here had initially sought to redraw the state’s maps ahead of the 2028 election — the soonest new boundaries could take effect here — which prompted retaliatory proposals from Republicans. But given Colorado’s distinctly Democratic voter base, the liberal push was likely to find more fertile ground, had one of the Democrats’ measures reached the ballot box.

Democrats and Republicans currently have a 4-4 split in representation in Colorado’s U.S. House districts, with one of those considered a swing district. Colorado’s congressional and state legislative districts are drawn by independent redistricting commissions, which were created through separate ballot measures and first produced maps in 2022, after the 2020 census.

The rulings bring, at least for now, a sputtering end to one front in the broader redistricting wars, which started with a GOP-friendly rewrite in Texas and has led several other states to overhaul their congressional maps in the past year.

Colorado’s role in that conflict was always more subordinate: Under the proposals rejected Monday, new maps would’ve been temporary and would not have played a part in the coming November election.

Still, had it succeeded, the redistricting push in Colorado would’ve allowed Democrats to pick up as many as three seats and expand national Democrats’ ability to respond to GOP gerrymandering elsewhere.

Instead, in the absence of new ballot measures, the current congressional boundaries will be in effect until the commission undertakes the next regular round of redistricting, after the 2030 census.

The court’s decisions, then, represent a win for conservatives in Colorado, who had sought to protect both the state’s independent redistricting process and the Republican-leaning congressional seats that would’ve been imperiled by Democrat-friendly revisions.

In a statement, the campaign backing the Democratic proposals, Coloradans for a Level Playing Field, said the justices “thwarted” Colorado’s effort to push back against President Donald Trump.

“The success of this partisan attempt to sideline Coloradans from responding to Donald Trump’s unprecedented mid-decade redistricting scheme is disappointing,” said Curtis Hubbard, a spokesman for the campaign. “While Trump and his MAGA allies regularly sidestep the law and ignore voters, efforts to respond have once again been dealt a legal setback over a technicality.”

Shad Murib, spokesman for the Colorado Democratic Party, said in a statement that the ruling was “a loss for America but a win for Republicans backing Donald Trump’s efforts to rig congressional elections.” He said the court had “denied voters the chance to have their say” and had “emboldened MAGA politicians in other states.”

Republicans, meanwhile, declared victory.

Michael Fields, the president of the conservative advocacy group Advance Colorado, said the court had “accurately decided that political games cannot be played with Colorado’s Congressional maps.”

“The court����ap decision is a win for fairness and a blow to the Democrats’ national attempts to take away the voice of citizens who want to choose their own representation,” Fields wrote.

Advance Colorado still has an out for signature collection that would block 2028 redistricting. If passed in November, the proposed constitutional amendment would need to be repealed if Democrats in the future wanted to create new maps early, Fields said. He said Advance was still “likely” to run that proposal.

Scott Gessler, a former secretary of state whose law firm filed the Republican measures, wrote that the court “soundly rejected the Democratic efforts to manipulate the ballot process to overturn Colorado’s nonpartisan redistricting process.”

Three of at issue in Monday’s rulings were tangled together. Two of them, Initiatives 241 and 242, would’ve replaced the existing redistricting process and implemented new, temporary maps for 2028 and 2030, respectively.

Each would have taken effect only if the other passed. Republicans, in response, filed Initiative 328. It, too, would’ve passed only had Initiative 241 been approved. The measure would’ve also implemented new maps, albeit not the Democratic-friendly ones proposed by 242.

Coloradans for a Level Playing Field had already raised $2.3 million and had spent more than $2 million of it, in large part to gather signatures for the ballot. Much of that money came from the Fairness Project, which has backed liberal ballot measures elsewhere, and American Opportunity Action, a relatively new, Democrat-aligned dark-money outfit.

The campaign also received $150,000 from a political action committee tied to the Democratic caucus in the U.S. House.

“Where do you stand in regard to ICE?” the woman asked, referring to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Rutinel, who was pressing the flesh on a hot, sunny afternoon in Thornton’s Carpenter Park, was more than ready with an answer. President Donald Trump’s immigration policies and crackdown on people living in the country illegally have provided reliable talking points for the 31-year-old state representative from Commerce City.

“They’re terrorizing Latino immigrants,” Rutinel, whose mother immigrated to the United States from the Dominican Republic, told the couple. “It’s personal for me.”

Nearly 24 hours earlier and about seven miles away, Shannon Bird — the other Democrat running in the 8th Congressional District — was going door to door in the Sherrelwood neighborhood in Adams County. The former state representative carried a stack of campaign flyers emblazoned with the words: “Fight Trump. Stop ICE.”

Bird, 57, and Rutinel are facing off in the Democratic primary on June 30. They’re each hoping to go to battle this November with Republican U.S. Rep. Gabe Evans to represent the 8th District, which largely covers suburbs and farm fields across parts of three counties north of Denver.

The race revolves around the familiar issues Democrats have been bringing up since Trump regained the White House last year: immigration, the cost of living and the environment. But Bird and Rutinel, separated in age by 26 years, say they bring their own skill sets and perspectives to a district that has landed in the national spotlight.

“This is where you find out where people are at — what they’re all about,” said Bird, as a campaign aide used a smartphone to shoot footage of her walking along Douglas Drive. “I know the community — I have an authentic connection to the people in this community. To win, people have to know you care about them.”

Several people who opened their doors on that hot Friday afternoon pledged their vote to Bird, including 80-year-old Patricia Hall, who has lived in her Albert Court house since 1972.

For Hall, it comes down to Bird’s longevity in the district — a quarter-century of volunteering for Adams 12 Five Star Schools and serving on the Westminster City Council and at the state Capitol for the better part of two terms.

Rutinel has lived in Commerce City for four years, though he spent several additional months in the city in 2020, according to his campaign. Bird has lived in Westminster for 25 years.

“She’s been out talking to the people,” said Hall, who worried about Colorado’s experience deficit in the nation’s capital should U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet be elected Colorado governor this fall. “We gotta get some of the experience back in Washington.”

While the candidates are putting their feet to the ground to talk to voters, the much bigger outreach effort is happening on television and online. Between fundraising by both campaigns and a gush of spending by outside groups, the 8th Congressional District primary has turned into an expensive affair.

Bird and Rutinel together have raised more than $5 million, and outside groups have reported independent spending totaling nearly $5.8 million in the primary.

“The 8th District is still the race to watch,” said Robert Preuhs, a political science professor at the Metropolitan State University of Denver.

The district, Colorado’s newest, covers Denver’s northern suburbs and the agricultural land and oil fields stretching to Greeley. It could play a crucial role in determining control of a closely divided Congress in 2027, given its — a dynamic that has sent representatives from both major parties to Washington in less than four years.

Until recently, the Democratic primary was a three-person contest. But in late May, former Marine Evan Munsing called it quits. He did not immediately endorse anyone in the race.

With an animated — and often angry — Democratic voting base in this election cycle, Preuhs said such angst could play in favor of a relative newcomer to the district, like Rutinel, who has tried to push a more left-leaning message on the trail.

“Voters are really looking for something different,” the professor said. “They’re seeking that candidate that can push back on ICE. I think he has a natural tie and attraction to Latinos in the district.”

The Latino factor and big outside money

The 8th District is Colorado’s most heavily Latino, with , according to data from the 2021 Colorado redistricting effort. The Hispanic vote was thought to be a critical part of former U.S. Rep. Yadira Caraveo’s victory in 2022 over state Sen. Barb Kirkmeyer, according to an exit poll conducted during the election.

In late April, the Latino Victory Project pledged a on behalf of Rutinel, who it said “will protect our communities from MAGA’s extremist policies,” referring to Trump’s coalition. The progressive advocacy group spends in support of Latino candidates.

Since then, the group — and its political action committee, the Latino Victory Fund — have ramped up their spending, reporting nearly $1.9 million in independent expenditures in support of Rutinel or opposing Bird, . Another Latino-supporting group, SOMOS PAC, has reported spending nearly $898,000 to help Rutinel.

Those amounts are part of nearly $4.1 million spent by outside groups on ads, mailers and other activities in support of Rutinel or opposing Bird as of Friday. That sum includes $949,000 spent by You Can Push Back, a super PAC that lauds Rutinel’s sponsorship of Colorado artificial intelligence regulations.

Less outside money — $1.7 million, according to FEC filings — has been spent to help Bird, either in support of her or opposing Rutinel. About $1.3 million of that has come from Women Vote, a super PAC associated with Emily’s List, which supports women running for office.

In direct contributions, Rutinel holds a distinct money advantage over Bird, having raised nearly twice as much as she has — Just over two weeks from the primary election, their ads — and those bought by outside groups — have become fixtures on metro Denver TV screens.

Yazmin Torres, who owns the Neveria La Unica food truck, says she connects with Rutinel, a fluent Spanish speaker raised by a single mother. The candidate paid her a visit at Thorntonfest last weekend and she thanked him for his work on a 2025 bill that .

As a single mom herself, Torres said she felt a kinship with Rutinel. She also wanted to follow in his footsteps and become a lawyer. Rutinel earned his law degree from Yale University.

“My dream is to go to law school, so he’s an inspiration to do that,” she said. “It’s nice to have someone to represent us.”

But securing the Latino vote in the district is no guarantee of victory. In 2024, the showed a strong preference among Latino voters for Caraveo over Evans — by more than 20% — but Evans, who is also Latino, prevailed in that contest.

Bird, an attorney before getting into politics, has her own story of growing up with a single mother. She often recounts that her family stayed afloat by relying on tips from her grandmother’s casino dealer job in Reno, Nevada. Those are the kinds of economic struggles she hears from potential constituents while knocking on doors.

“The high cost of living — and now with the Iran war — the cost of gas,” Bird said. “And those energy costs spread throughout the economy.”

Her opponent’s decision to support a state budget this year that included cuts to Medicaid has become one of Bird’s campaign attack lines. At a late May candidate forum in Greeley, she told Rutinel and the audience that she would “absolutely not have voted to cut Medicaid.”

“He should have fought to use the rainy day fund to hold off the worst of these cuts,” Bird said in an interview with The Denver Post. “Both Gabe Evans and Manny Rutinel believe that cutting Medicaid is a way to pass a budget.”

Rutinel dismisses Bird’s allegations, saying he tried to save Medicaid funds in the Colorado budget but was unable to marshal the support amongst his colleagues to do so.

“I did the work to bring amendments to dip into the reserves further,” he said.

Rutinel said he grew up on Medicaid, so he knows its importance firsthand.

“Saving Medicaid is personal for me,” he said.

In turn, Rutinel regularly critiques Bird’s vote against a 2025 bill in the state House that aimed to further curtail federal immigration authorities’ access to public spaces in Colorado, from government buildings to libraries to public schools. He said he is “severely disappointed that Shannon Bird was the only House Democrat to vote against it.”

“She’s trying to pull a fast one,” Rutinel told folks hiding from the sun at the covered Brighton Writers Group booth at Thorntonfest. “We need to be fighting for the people who are struggling.”

Voters in the 8th District, he said, may have wanted more oversight at the southern border than what former President Joe Biden provided, but they don’t want the chaotic — and sometimes violent — mass deportation agenda of this president.

“People tell me Donald Trump and Gabe Evans were going to go after the criminals — and they’re going after the grandmas,” he said. “People are telling me they feel lied to.”

Plenty of agreement

Bird calls Rutinel’s accusation on the ICE bill apocryphal. She said her “no” vote on Senate Bill 276 happened during a committee hearing on the bill, which she said needed improvement before going to a floor vote in the House.

Bird said she regrets being absent the day the bill came up for a floor vote in the House a few weeks later — a missed vote she blames on a family medical emergency.

“It was one of the few votes I missed, and I regret that,” Bird told The Post earlier this year.

Rutinel, she said, has been using that bill to mischaracterize her position on ICE and Trump’s immigration policy. She says she has the only , with requirements for body-worn cameras and officers who are better vetted and trained.

“I think Manny has a record he can’t defend,” she said.

Immigration will prove an important issue in the 8th Congressional District, said Preuhs, the political science professor. Though ICE’s footprint in Colorado has been lighter than in other American cities, the issue is never far from a district with so many Latinos.

“You have a Democratic voting constituency that is adamantly against Trump and they’re looking for a strong advocate for their position,” Preuhs said.

But if the forum in Greeley last month showed anything, it’s that the two Democrats running for the nomination agree on much — including opposition to a federal ban on hydraulic fracturing to extract oil, support for a ban on oil and gas leases on federal land, and support for a boost in the federal minimum wage.

In recent weeks, Rutinel has been on the defensive after  that he had reversed or softened past positions in support of a fracking ban, cancellation of student debt and a single-payer healthcare system. His campaign pushed back on some of the outlet’s characterizations.

The 8th Congressional District partially lies in Weld County, which is Colorado’s most prolific producer of oil and gas. Agriculture is also a big presence in the district, and both Bird and Rutinel have slammed Trump’s tariffs, many of which were overturned in February by the Supreme Court, as unfriendly to farmers.

“Congress needs to pass legislation to make it clear who has the power to tariff,” Bird told The Post.

Rutinel, who was an economist for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers before getting into politics, was equally tough on the body he is vying to join when it comes to preserving its power of the purse.

“If we had a willingness from Congress to pull back these corrupt and chaotic tariff policies, we could bring down prices,” he said. “It’s putting so many of the family farms and ranchers at risk.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said Monday that the risks being seen as political in the wake of a major voting rights decision.

She spoke after writing a solo dissent from the court����ap decision allowing Louisiana to move quickly to use new maps after the a majority-Black district and weakened the Voting Rights Act.

“Public confidence is really all the judiciary has,” she said at a talk before the American Law Institute in Washington, D.C.

“Everyone believes the court system is outside the political sphere. I think that means it����ap incumbent on us to do things, to act in ways, that shore up public confidence,” she said.

Polling has shown public trust in the Supreme Court at historic lows in recent years, and Chief Justice John Roberts has a perception that the justices are “political actors,” calling it a misunderstanding.

Jackson has become a frequent dissenter on the Supreme Court, joining her liberal colleagues last month to oppose the 6-3 decision that hollowed out the Voting Rights Act and later writing for herself to protest an order allowing Louisiana to use new maps even though early primary voting had already begun. She said the court had “spawned chaos” amid a fierce nationwide redistricting battle.

Three of her conservative colleagues on the court forcefully disagreed, calling her criticism “baseless” and saying accusations of partisanship aren’t justified. The alternative, they wrote, would have been to allow an election under a map found to be unconstitutional.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Friday rejected Virginia’s bid to restore a congressional map that would have given Democrats a chance to pick up four seats in the closely divided House of Representatives.

The court����ap order is the latest twist in the nation’s . It was kicked off last year by President Donald Trump  to redraw their lines and was supercharged by a recent  severely weakening the Voting Rights Act that opened up even more winnable seats for the GOP.

In recent days, the justices have sided with Republicans in Alabama and Louisiana who hope to redo their congressional maps to produce more GOP-leaning seats following the court����ap voting rights decision.

But the Virginia situation was different, stemming from a 4-3 ruling by the Virginia Supreme Court that  a constitutional amendment that  just last month.

The state court found that the Democratic-controlled legislature improperly began the process of placing the amendment on the ballot after early voting had begun in Virginia’s general election last fall.

The Supreme Court typically doesn’t intervene in state court proceedings unless they present an issue of federal law. Virginia Democrats had hoped to persuade the justices that the Virginia court misread federal law and Supreme Court precedent that hold that, even if early voting is underway, an election does not happen until Election Day itself.

Virginia’s amendment had been intended as a response to Republican gains in Texas, Missouri, North Carolina and Ohio, and to blunt a new map in Florida that just became law. Once the Virginia amendment passed, it briefly turned the nationwide redistricting scramble into a draw between the two parties.

That was unraveled by the Virginia Supreme Court����ap decision.

It����ap possible Democrats could use the high court����ap rejection of their bid, while also blessing Republican efforts in Alabama and Louisiana, in election-year messaging about a partisan Supreme Court.

The state’s top Democrats disagreed about whether it was even too late for help from the Supreme Court. “Time grows short, but it is not yet too late,” lawyers for the Democratic leaders of the legislature as well as the state told the justices in a brief filed Friday.

A day earlier, the office of Democratic Gov. Abigail Spanberger already had confirmed that the state will hold this year’s elections under the current districts established in 2021. Last month, Virginia Commissioner of Elections Steve Koski said a court order was needed by this past Tuesday to set the district lines for primary elections on Aug. 4.

The Virginia Supreme Court on Friday struck down a voter-approved Democratic congressional redistricting plan, delivering another major setback to the party in a nationwide battle against Republicans for an edge in this year’s midterm elections.

The court  that the state’s Democratic-led legislature violated procedural requirements when it placed the constitutional amendment on the ballot to authorize mid-decade redistricting. Voters  the amendment on April 21, but the court’s ruling renders the vote’s result meaningless.

Writing for the majority, Justice D. Arthur Kelsey wrote that the legislature submitted the proposed constitutional amendment to voters “in an unprecedented manner.”

“This violation irreparably undermines the integrity of the resulting referendum vote and renders it null and void,” he wrote.

Democrats had hoped to win as many as four additional U.S. House seats under Virginia’s redrawn map as part of an attempt to offset Republican  done elsewhere at the urging of President Donald Trump. Later Friday, Virginia Democrats said in a filing that they intended to file an emergency appeal of the state high court’s decision with the U.S. Supreme Court.

Friday’s ruling, combined with a recent  that severely weakened the Voting Rights Act, has supercharged Republicans’ congressional gerrymandering advantage heading into this year’s midterm elections.

“Huge win for the Republican Party, and America, in Virginia,” Trump said about the decision on his social media account.

Richard Hudson, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, said the ruling was another sign of GOP momentum heading into the midterms.

“We’re on offense, and we’re going to win,” he said in a statement.

Don Scott, the Democratic speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates, said Democrats respect the court����ap opinion but lamented that it overturned the will of the voters: “They voted YES because they wanted to fight back against the Trump power grab.”

Suzan DelBene, chairwoman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, criticized the court majority for what she said was a decision that “cast aside the will of the voters,” but she said the people will have the final say.

“In November, they will, and they’ll power Democrats to the House majority,” she said in a statement.

A longshot Democratic appeal

Democrats are taking a legal longshot in asking the nation’s highest court to reverse the Virginia ruling. The U.S. Supreme Court tries to avoid second-guessing state courts’ interpretations of their own constitutions. In 2023, it turned down  to overrule a state Supreme Court decision that blocked the GOP’s congressional map.

Still, even an unsuccessful appeal would let Democrats try to blame their failure on the conservative majority that dominates the nation’s highest court, which has already infuriated the party and civil rights groups by neutering .

Legislative voting districts typically are redrawn once a decade after each census to account for population changes. But Trump sparked an unusual flurry of mid-decade redistricting last year by  in Texas to redraw districts in a bid to win several additional U.S. House seats and hold on to their party’s narrow majority in the midterm elections.

California responded with  drawn to Democrats’ advantage, and Utah’s top court imposed a new congressional map that also helps Democrats. Meanwhile, Republicans stand to gain from new House districts passed in Florida, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio and . They could add even more after the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in the Voting Rights Act case, which has prompted  to consider redrawing  in time for this year’s elections.

Virginia is currently represented in the U.S. House by six Democrats and five Republicans, all elected from districts imposed by a court following a bipartisan redistricting commission’s failure to agree on a map after the 2020 census. The new districts could have given Democrats an improved chance to win all but one of the state’s 11 congressional seats.

The state Supreme Court’s majority was critical of the state’s redrawing of the congressional maps to benefit one political party. Those justices noted that 47% of the state’s voters supported GOP congressional candidates in 2024, but the new map could result in Democrats making up 91% of the state’s House delegation.

What was in the Democrats’ map

Under the Democratic-drawn map, five districts would have been anchored in the Democratic stronghold of northern Virginia. Revisions to four other districts across Richmond, southern Virginia and Hampton Roads would have diluted the voting power of conservative blocs in those areas. And a reshaped district in parts of western Virginia would have lumped together three Democratic-leaning college towns to offset other Republican voters.

The state Supreme Court����ap seven justices are appointed by the state legislature, which has toggled back and forth between Democratic, Republican and split control over recent years. Legal experts say the body doesn’t have a set ideological profile.

The case before the court focused not on the shape of the new districts but rather on the process the General Assembly used to authorize them.

Because the state’s redistricting commission was established by a voter-approved constitutional amendment, lawmakers had to propose an amendment to redraw the districts. That required approval of a resolution in two separate legislative sessions, with a state election sandwiched in between, to place the amendment on the ballot.

The legislature’s initial approval of the amendment occurred last October, during early voting for the general election, before it concluded. The legislature’s  occurred after a new legislative session began in January. Lawmakers also  in February laying out the new districts, subject to voter approval of the constitutional amendment.

Arguments over the definition of ‘election’

 focused on whether the legislature’s initial approval of the amendment came too late, because early voting already had begun.

Attorney Matthew Seligman, who defended the legislature, argued that the “election” should be defined narrowly to mean the Tuesday of the general election. In that case, the legislature’s first vote on the redistricting amendment occurred before the election and was constitutional, he told judges.

But in its ruling, the Supreme Court said, “this view appears to be wholly unprecedented in Virginia’s history.”

An attorney for the plaintiffs, Thomas McCarthy, argued an “election” should be interpreted to cover the entire period during which voters can cast ballots, which lasts several weeks in Virginia. If that����ap the case, he told justices, then the legislature’s initial endorsement of the redistricting amendment came too late to comply with the state constitution.

The Supreme Court agreed with that argument, writing: “The General Assembly passed the proposed constitutional amendment for the first time well after voters had begun casting ballots during the 2025 general election.”

By the time lawmakers initially endorsed the amendment, voters already had cast more than 1.3 million ballots in the general election, about 40% of the total votes ultimately cast, the court said.

The Supreme Court����ap ruling affirms a decision by a judge in rural Tazewell County, in southwestern Virginia. The court had placed a hold on that ruling and allowed the redistricting vote to proceed before hearing arguments on the case.

In the dissent to Friday’s ruling, Chief Justice Cleo Powell said the election for the purpose of considering the amendment does not include the early voting period.

“The majority’s definition creates an infinite voting loop that appears to have no established beginning,” she wrote, “only a definitive end: Election Day.”

Willie Simon stood outside the Memphis motel where Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in 1968, now a museum dedicated to the Civil Rights Movement.

Days after the U.S. Supreme Court of the Voting Rights Act, Simon feared what the decision would mean not just for like himself but an entire country where the political guardrails seem to be coming apart.

Simon, who leads the Shelby County Democratic Party in Tennessee, said the court����ap conservative majority set a precedent that if you’re “not in the in-crowd group, they can just erase us.”

By weakening a requirement that states draw congressional districts in a way that gives minorities an opportunity to control their own fate, the court escalated the nationwide redistricting war that has seen Democrats and Republicans casting aside decades of tradition in hopes of gaining an edge over the competition. New sessions are scheduled to begin this week in two Republican-controlled states to eliminate U.S. House districts represented by Democrats, and there’s more on the horizon.

It����ap the latest example of how the American democratic experiment has been pushed to the breaking point in the decade since Donald Trump rose to power. has become commonplace. There’s been and a rash of assassinations. Five years after on the U.S. Capitol, Trump’s allies are trying to harness the same falsehoods about voter fraud to

The rules and norms that once helped smooth over an unruly country’s vast differences have given way to

“I’ve never subscribed to the idea we’re in a civil war, but the gerrymandering wars and the recent decision from the Supreme Court do not make the United States more united,” said Matt Dallek, a political scientist at George Washington University. “It speeds up the hyperpartisan force and atmosphere that people feel on both sides.”

‘No more rule of law’

Trump ignited the conflict over redistricting last year by urging Republicans to redraw congressional maps to reduce the likelihood that his party loses the U.S. House in the November midterm elections.

It was an unusual step, since redistricting normally only takes place after the once-a-decade census to accommodate population shifts. But in 2019 the Supreme Court ruled federal courts cannot prevent partisan gerrymandering, and Trump saw a chance to push the limits.

Once Republican-led states like Texas started shifting district lines, Democratic-led states like California countered. was heading for a draw until the Supreme Court����ap conservative majority issued its long-awaited decision in Louisiana v. Callais.

The court weakened the last remaining national impediment to gerrymandering — the Voting Rights Act����ap requirement that, in places where white people and outnumbered racial minorities vote differently, districts be drawn to give those minorities a chance to elect representatives they prefer.

The ruling opened a new set of

Republicans in Tennessee plan to erase the only Democratic congressional district, which is majority Black and centered in Memphis, by splitting it up among more conservative suburban and rural white communities. More than a dozen other majority-minority districts, mainly in the South, could face the same fate.

Louisiana moved to , set for May 16, to have a chance to redraw two majority-Black Democratic seats it was required to maintain before the recent ruling. Alabama is trying to get the Supreme Court to let it redraw its two majority-Black seats.

“We should demand that State Legislatures do what the Supreme Court says must be done,” Trump wrote on social media on Sunday. “That is more important than administrative convenience.”

He said Republicans could gain 20 seats through redistricting.

Democrats have threatened to retaliate by splitting up conservative bastions in states like New York and Illinois, which would reallocate Republican voters to more liberal, urban districts.

With fewer limits — either legal or self-imposed — people expect the issue to become a perpetual race to squeeze every possible advantage out of legislative maps.

“It����ap hard to know where it ends,” said Rick Hasen, a law professor at UCLA.

Partisans gleefully shared color-coded maps of California with all 54 House seats drawn for Democrats, or southern states with only a couple of blue districts. Most agreed that eventually it will be very hard for Democrats to get elected to the House in any Republican-run state, even if there are large swaths of blue-leaning terrain, and vice versa for Republicans in Democratic-run states.

That seems un-American, said Jonathan Cervas, a political scientist at Carnegie Mellon who’s redrawn maps on behalf of judges reviewing redistricting litigation. The country’s system, he said, “was founded on this idea that it����ap majority rule with minority rights.”

“There is no more rule of law in redistricting,” Cervas said. “There have to be some constraints, somewhere. Otherwise we don’t really have elections.”

Politicians’ best tool to game elections

The arcane art of drawing legislative lines is the most powerful tool that politicians have for gaming elections. They can make districts an almost guaranteed win for their side by drawing lines that scoop up a majority of their voters and just enough of the opposition’s supporters to ensure the other party cannot win that seat or the one next door, either.

Lawmakers have used the trick since the country’s founding. Democratic gerrymanders helped the party hold onto the House through the Reagan revolution. After the 2010 midterms, Republican majorities in state legislatures allowed the GOP to draw districts to lock up control of the House even during President Barack Obama’s reelection two years later.

However, that didn’t prevent the “blue wave” in 2018, during Trump’s first term, when Democrats retook the House. It was a reminder that even the most partisan gerrymanders may stifle shifts in public opinion but eventually crack as political tides turn.

“When you try to get every last ounce of blood from the stone you can end up shooting yourself in the foot,” said Michael Li of the liberal Brennan Center for Justice in New York.

Political coalitions also change, and voters that a party thinks will be reliable can switch sides. That����ap what����ap happened in the Trump era, as Democrats have expanded their support among wealthier and suburban voters and Republicans among Blacks and Latinos.

Although Republicans won’t be able to exploit the full force of the Supreme Court ruling until after the November midterms, it will be challenging for Democrats to find enough seats to counter those gains.

Sean Trende, a political analyst who has drawn maps for Republicans, agreed that the court decision is likely to lead to partisan gerrymandering run amok. He said it����ap been hard to find neutral arbiters to rein in politicians who draw lines to benefit themselves.

The coming storm, Trende said, will be more of a symptom of polarization than its root cause.

“All our institutions are broken. We don’t speak a common political language,” Trende said. “This is what you get.”