Colorado’s congressional redistricting commission has grappled with months-delayed census data, legislators trying to unconstitutionally tweak their procedures, a state Supreme Court case to defend their independence, and the takedown of their first chairman over his controversial Facebook posts — and they’ve only been convened about three months. • Now they’re getting closer to their main task: the high-stakes political remapping of Colorado’s congressional map, this

time with a new eighth district. • With an additional seat this year, and a booming urban population over the past decade, districts won’t just be

adjusted at the margins. It will be a whole new map, setting the table for a decade of congressional elections.

The commissioners will have to balance several redistricting principles — contiguity and compactness, equal population, respecting political subdivisions, geographic boundaries and communities of interest, compliance with the Voting Rights Act and, finally, promoting competitiveness where possible. Depending on how each of those concepts are deployed, significantly different sets of congressional districts could result.

To explore how the redistricting criteria can affect a map, Colorado Politics compiled several maps, each with district population deviations of less than one percentage point and using some of the same data being used by the commission, but drawn prioritizing different concepts. Some seem unlikely, but they illustrate how the redistricting criteria manifest in different maps, while some might end up resembling the map ultimately drawn by the commission.

For congressional redistricting, districts need to be as close to equal population as possible, down to only single-person differences. And they also have to be contiguous, meaning they’re a single, unsplit geographic unit.

From there, each of the redistricting criteria — included in the constitutional amendments overwhelmingly approved in 2018 to establish the commission system — leads to different mapping choices.

Compactness

Is something compact? It sounds like a simple question, but like most everything in the world of redistricting, it gets pretty technical, pretty quick. There are a few ways to measure compactness: You can divide the area of the district by the area of the smallest circle that could encapsulate it, meaning a circle would be a perfect district, but also meaning a spiraled snake of a district could also have a high “compactness” score. Other methods compare the perimeter and the area. Just last year, some researchers even came up with an algorithm for measuring compactness called, for lack of a better term, the “you know it when you see it” method.

An 8-district congressional plan drawn for Colorado, maximizing for two of the common compactness measurements (Roeck and Polsby-pop- per) leads to several rectangular-ish districts: Two large rural districts, one in eastern Colorado and one in western Colorado; one district for El Paso County, and five more capturing the Front Range population between Douglas County and Wyoming.

The map shows that compactness in districting means, roughly, sim- ply-shaped districts.

But the simple shapes of the com- pactness-favoring map don’t line up with county and municipal boundaries, meaning that while it “scores” high for compactness, that comes at the cost of another of the redistricting criteria, respecting political subdivisions.

It also has only one district with a minority voting-age population greater than 35%, roughly where districts are considered to have a “minority influence” in the elections. But because other ways of drawing an eight-district plan in Colorado could produce a greater number of districts with a “minority influence” composition, the compactness-favoring map could be seen as coming at the cost of empowering minority voters. And if, in the course of drafting the map, it’s demonstrated that two or three districts can be drawn with “minority influence,” not doing so could be challenged in court for failing to comply with the Voting Rights Act, which calls for empowering minority groups where possible.

The map would have five solid Democratic districts, two solid Republican districts and one competitive district.

Competitiveness

“Competitiveness” is a term that invariably ends up in any thorough discussion of redistricting, usually based on the idea that competitive districts are something to be strived for.

Politicians, who for a long time redrew political maps without much public scrutiny, have an incentive to draw districts that are safe for both the majority and minority party, the theory goes, keeping the status quo intact, but virtually ensuring that the districts will never elect someone from another party.

But by drawing districts where the election chances are narrower for any given politician, competitiveness advocates say, the politicians who win elections in the competitive districts will have to do so by winning over the support of voters from both ends of the political spectrum — leading to more moderate politicians all around, instead of diehard partisans espousing polarizing views.

Competitive districts mean Con- gress should be more “responsive” to the voters as well, meaning that changes in public sentiment toward the parties will mean representatives from competitive districts will be swapped out for their partisan opponents more frequently. The result would be the partisan makeup of Congress shifting more dramatically with public sentiment.

Likewise, as more congressional districts are drawn to favor competitiveness, wave elections become more likely. As popular support for each party ebbs and flows their elected representatives will be tossed out in favor of the opposing party.

But there’s not complete agreement about how to define competitiveness, and how much there should be. Some say it’s a district that’s likely to swap partisan hands during the decade. Some say within five percentage points of a 50-50 partisan split. Some say that a state’s two-way partisan split, like Colorado’s 52-47 Democratic lean, should be considered the “center.” And then to determine when districts are “competitive,” which data to use is another question with several possible answers: Voter registration, past election results, composites blending multiple election results with voter registration? Even privately collected consumer data can be used to determine an area’s partisan leaning.

It’s possible to draw a congressional map for Colorado that maximizes the number of competitive districts, where seven of the eight districts would be near coin-toss districts.

Like the compactness-favoring map, it would split counties and cities. But unlike the compactness-favoring map,

ter job of respecting the communities of interest criteria.

Beyond communities of interest, if a district drawn in the southern part of the state could be demonstrated to empower Hispanic and Latino communities with enough voting power to significantly influence the outcome of elections there, then the Voting Rights Act requirements might apply as well.

Commissioner Simon Tafoya, a Denver Democrat, said the unique history of the Hispanic and Latino communities in southern Colorado, which he described as a mixture over centuries of Native Americans and Spanish settlers, needs to be considered when the commission divides the state’s rural areas.

Colorado’s population is roughly one-quarter Hispanic, with higher concentration of Hispanic residents in the suburbs on the periphery of Denver.

Because Colorado is going to have an additional congressional seat for the next decade, each district will go from being one-seventh to oneeighth of the population, meaning it may be possible to draw districts that give greater influence to the state’s ethnic minorities.

But there are different ways to go about that.

It’s possible to draw an upside-downu-shaped district along the edge of Denver County, which is a majority nonwhite voting-age population district. It would arguably give the Hispanic community, and to a smaller degree the Denver-area Black community, a district where they comprise the majority and can elect congressional representatives of their choice.

Combining racial and ethnic minority groups for a combined minority-majority is called a “coalition district,” and some courts have recognized them for the purposes of Voting Rights Act compliance but others have not.

The result would be a heavily Democratic district, with one of many different ways to configure other Denver-metro area districts around it, likely in a way that creates a second Democratic-leaning district that includes the remainder of Denver, and a third district with more of the Denver metro area, which could be near competitive.

Creating a minority-majority district in the Denver area would also likely lead to an overall map that is close to a 4-4 partisan split, which is better for Republicans than most map configurations.

The issue would need to be examined thoroughly by the commission, and they will likely hear from experts on the topic of racially polarized voting patterns, but drawing a district that way is possible. In other states where minority-majority districts are possible, the Voting Rights Act keeps them in place, protecting minority voting power.

But drawing a single district with a majority of nonwhite voters could be seen as “packing,” or concentrating political power for one group, at the expense of giving them influence in multiple districts.

So the commission will be faced with a balancing act: empowering minority groups by drawing districts that provide opportunities for influence in elections and not concentrating them into districts with such large minority populations that they are confined to influencing a smaller number of districts than might be possible.

If the goal of the districting is to end up with a similar composition to the state’s overall ethnic makeup, meaning giving influence to minority voters in roughly one-third of the districts, like the state is roughly one-third non-white, then the result is several districts, drawn to not to exceed more than 40% in any single district, then it’s possible to draw three districts with between 35% and 40% minority voting-age population composition.

If those configurations can be demonstrated with past election data to empower minority group influence, that could be a preferable option to a single district with a highest-possible minority composition.

But a map plan that provides three minority “influence” districts, as well as the map that creates a minority-majority district, would not keep cities and counties whole, but rather would split many apart, in order to create the desired racial balance.

Marco Dorado, a Democratic political operative working on redistricting in Colorado for the National Redistricting Action Fund, an affiliate of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, said he and others are especially keen on the idea of a district that empowers the Hispanic community on the northern side of Denver, straddling the county line between Denver and Adams County.

“That’s where the growth of the Latino community has been the most rapid,” Dorado said, emphasizing the balance needed. “We need to ensure that we’re not packing or cracking underrepresented communities.”

Dorado’s idea about the northern parts of the Denver-metro area being drawn together materialized this week in a map proposed by the Colorado Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.

The group’s map includes a district that would group together the areas north and northeast of the Denver metro area, portions of Adams County, southwest Weld County and Greeley, and northeast portions of Boulder County. It would be 26% Hispanic and in total 32% nonwhite. The group said the same dynamics identified by Dorado led them to their proposal.

“This proposal fractures the Latino voice ... and is deliberately designed to protect an incumbent,” Jennifer Parenti, a redistricting specialist with the civic and democratic rights organization Common Cause, said in a tweet this week about the Chamber’s map. Parenti did not respond to requests to further clarify her tweet.

But as the commission heads into the final days before their staff will draft an initial, preliminary map plan for public comment throughout the coming months, one of the congressional redistricting commissioners said he wants to hear from more community advocacy groups. “We’ve not heard from any Native Americans. Just today the first Hispanic group to come before us,” commissioner Tafoya said of the Hispanic Chamber on June 8. “We have yet to see an African American organization come before us.”

Keeping political subdivisions intact

Another option for the redistricting plan would be to attempt to keep as many of the cities and counties in the Denver area intact, without splitting them into multiple districts.

The city of Aurora has requested that the commission not split the city. Denver has a history of remaining a single congressional district as well.

It’s possible to draw them intact with several different configurations, with three districts differently situated around the bulk of Denver County.

Most configurations would lead to two Democratic, one Republican and one mostly competitive district.

Alan Philp, a Republican political consultant active in Colorado politics and in redistricting, said he thinks keeping most of the Denver-area districts intact will gain traction with the commission. He said Aurora leaders will probably continue to push for keeping their city whole, and that doing so is possible while creating competitive districts in Denver’s suburbs.

“I think it will be difficult for the commission to draw more than two competitive districts, and follow the other neutral constitutional criteria: keeping political subdivisions intact and respecting communities of interest, without creating districts that many would find repugnant ...”

What’s next

By June 23, the congressional redistricting commission intends to have a preliminary draft map, which will provide the basis of a redistricting road show of sorts, where the commission will hold public hearings, presenting the maps and gathering input about what they like and what they don’t.

The map plans prioritizing one concept over another are not mutually exclusive. The commission may combine elements. Perhaps, for example, two of the competitiveness-favoring map districts can be adjusted and fit together with a plan that also creates three minority-influence districts. It may be possible to keep the Denver-area cities and counties mostly intact. Or maybe the rural counties’ proposal can be adjusted to make one of the rural districts more competitive.

In August, when the U.S. Census Bureau has said 2020 census data will be available, the commission will adjust the map using the final data and public input, creating a final congressional map plan. The commissions have to finish the maps and submit them to the state Supreme Court for review in November, in order to give election administration officials enough time to incorporate the new districts into their 2022 election planning.