Redistricting commission

But we vetted it and felt like the numbers were solid, and I think it's a good basis for this conversation.

Big picture, this district, the 8th Congressional District, was created in 2021 by Colorado's Independent Redistricting Commission to be a toss-up, and it's really living up to that.

So first it was won by a Democrat in 2022, then by a Republican, that's Evans, in 2024.

And in both of those races, they were just decided by a few thousand votes.

I was recently with Governor Martinez and the State Board of Finance for eight years.

I'm currently on the Government Oversight Committee here in Albuquerque, as well as being on the Redistricting Committee for the City of Albuquerque the last cycle.

That's a brief summary.

Great.

And in 2023, there were five rounds of Ohio Supreme Court decisions rejecting Ohio's voting maps as unconstitutionally gerrymandered.

The court then eventually issued a majority opinion that the court no longer had oversight over the issue because the Ohio Redistricting Commission had adopted a map that was submitted in September of 2023 with bipartisan support.

And so then it was said in that decision that it was no longer a question for the court.

So if that line of reasoning holds up, what is the appropriate remedy for maps that are considered to be gerrymandered if it is not a question for the court once the Ohio Redistricting Commission has signed off on the voting districts?

So I dissented very vigorously on that decision because what the Ohio Redistricting Commission did was to cut a deal.

They cut a political deal, and that's just what we used to do, and that's just why the public voted for constitutional amendments to stop that.

I didn't agree with it because it didn't follow the Constitution and every single person on that redistricting commission was an elected official who took the oath to follow the laws in the Constitution of this state.

Gerrymandering refers to the intentional manipulation of voting district boundaries to give one political party or group an unfair advantage in elections.

Four actually passed that year, but they're only mad about the two of them for the moment.

But, oh, that's right, it was the Independent Redistricting Commission.

That was the other one in 2018.

So creating the 60% benchmark, the Tribune Editorial Board writes, Amendment B would impose...

Is there any, is there any state that's doing something right now that you admire?

Well, at full disclosure, I was involved in, uh, working for the legal team in the state of Michigan, uh, uh, uh, on their, um, their citizen- their Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission.

But, uh, Michigan is certainly an interesting case, you know, where sometimes we look at a problem like this in politics and we think, you know, "What if we just, what if we just, uh, randomly selected some citizens and had them, uh, make a decision?"

[laughs]

It's the only district that could very easily either go to Republicans or Democrats.

Colorado's Independent Redistricting Commission created this district.

It's north of Denver, and it was created in 2021.

It covers northern Denver suburbs like Commerce City, northwest to Greeley and Weld County.