Colorado Voters Pass Measure for Nonpartisan Commission for U.S. House Districting

Colorado voters have passed Measure Y with 71%. It creates a commission to draw U.S. House districts. The commission will have 4 Democrats, 4 Republi ans, and 4 members who are neither.


Comments

Colorado Voters Pass Measure for Nonpartisan Commission for U.S. House Districting — 6 Comments

  1. I still don’t understand why we use commissions for this when we could just set up a computer program and have it draw the district as non-biased as possible.

  2. Any program will have inherent biases.

    A better solution would be to eliminate perfect population equality, and weight legislator votes by the population of the districts. The voters could draw their own districts.

  3. While I like the basic idea (previous legislative redistricting attempts ended up in front of partisan judges), I voted against this measure. The devil is in the details–a minor party must eclipse one of the two major parties (Democrat or Republican) to gain any representation on the redistricting commission (no proportional representation), so discrimination against any political party not among the two largest is now enshrined in Colorado’s constitution.

  4. Colorado also passed a legislative initiative to create a commission to perform legislative redistricting. The two commissions will operate in parallel. Even the judicial panels that are involved in the selection of commissioners are separate.

    Voters are classified based on their party affiliation, as either Democrats; Republicans; or not affiliated with any party. Those affiliated with a minor party are excluded. Colorado permits nonaffilated voters to vote in major party primaries, so a voter may regularly vote in Democratic (or Republican) primaries and be considered nonpartisan. The same criteria apply to the judicial panels.

    Maps will be drawn by the legislative staff. After drawing districts that are compact, respect counties and cities, etc. The mapdrawers are directed to tweak the boundaries to increase the number of competitive seats. This would seem to require modifying districts to be less compact or meet other criteria less well. Also maximizing the number of competitive districts may mean also increaing the number of extreme partisan districts. Imagine a district that is overall 60R:40D, with some areas 70:30, many 60:40, and some 50:50. To make the district more competitive, the easiest way to do this is to move some of the 70:30 areas out and add some 50:50 areas. While making some districts more competitive, it will make other districts more lopsided. Alternatively, one can pair disparate areas, and create the equivalent of a competitive boxing match where the goal is to knockout the opponent as bloodthirsty crowds throw beer bottles into the ring as they call for low blows or to “kill him”.

    Competiveness can be gamed. If there is a popular incumbent who outperforms his party, “citizens” may propose a district that looks competitive based on pary results, but isn’t based on actual candidates. The commission would be barred at looking at endogenous election results, rather than what actually would happen because it is barred from considering incumbency. It might alsoignore dynamic effects, or consider 55:45 districts as competitive as 50:49. If a “citizen” proposed a map with more “competitive” districts, the commission may be legally compelled to adopt it. Any plan adopted by the commission is subject to review by the state supreme court which likely has its own partisan biases.

  5. Jim Riley, good analysis. You brought up some points I hadn’t thought about.

    (I also see some analogies with competing properties or criteria for voting systems, triggered by reading about Approval Voting being approved in Fargo, ND but STAR Voting being rejected in Lane County, OR; also see “Gaming the Vote: Why Elections Aren’t Fair (and What We Can Do About It)” by William Poundstone on voting systems)

    A prior version of this measure had some accommodation for minor parties, but was left out of the final version. There was a significant bipartisan media campaign promoting this, including TV ads and a visit by the Governator, Arnold Schwarzenegger. The discrimination against minor parties was a deal breaker for me.

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