conservative-backed proposal that would bar congressional redistricting that favors any political party will appear on November’s ballot, the Secretary of State’s office announced Monday.
The measure, submitted by Advance Colorado, a conservative political nonprofit that doesn’t disclose its donors, was originally proposed to counteract a trio of ballot redistricting measures that aimed to give Democrats an edge in winning congressional seats. But the Democratic-friendly measures were tossed out by the Colorado Supreme Court in June for violating a requirement in the state constitution that ballot measures only deal with a single subject.
Now Advance Colorado’s proposal will be the only redistricting question voters will be asked on the Nov. 3 ballot. It repeats most of the current constitutional requirements for redistricting, passed by voters in 2018, in which an independent commission draws the boundaries. But it adds a new provision that bars the districts from being drawn to purposefully favor a political party.
The unsuccessful proposals that would have favored Democrats, funded by a group linked to U.S. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, a New York Democrat, would have temporarily paused the state’s independent redistricting process. They would have created new maps for the elections in 2028 and 2030. Democrats would have been favored to win seven of the state’s eight congressional districts, up from the four they currently hold.
Traditionally, redistricting has only occurred once a decade following the U.S. census. But some states have adopted new congressional maps recently as part of an off-cycle attempt — set off by President Donald Trump — to gain an edge in congressional elections.
Advance Colorado says its proposal would only apply to changes in the congressional map done outside the normal redistricting cycle. The group declined to comment for this story.
But Mario Nicolais, an election lawyer and Colorado Sun columnist who has been working on a campaign opposing the measure, said it’s not clear whether the change would impact regularly scheduled redistricting after a census.
The proposal, if passed, could prevent Democrats from trying to redraw congressional boundaries from ever counteracting redistricting by Republicans in other states, he said.
“They want to preserve the status quo because this map is as good as it gets for Republicans right now,” Nicolais said of the proposal.
Colorado’s current congressional map was drawn by an independent commission in 2021. Voters handed congressional and state legislative redistricting power to the commission by passing a pair of ballot measures amending the state constitution in 2018.
Because Colorado’s redistricting process is laid out in the state constitution, only a constitutional amendment can change it. A change in the state constitution can only happen with approval by 55% of voters.
This story previously appeared on The Colorado Sun.
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