December 22, 2010 10:36 PM UTC

Reapportionment's Effect on Denver

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• by: Dan Willis

With the premilinary census results now released, it is not too difficult to extrapolate approximate population numbers at the county level. The offiical county-level numbers will be out a few months.

From where it stands now, Denver will end up with 7.9 house districts and 4.25 senate districts. This is a slight reduction from the roughly 8.6 and 4.6 we currently have.

The most notable change is the HD number as it means, if the Reapportionment Commission tries to keep within county boundaries, Denver will have 8 HD’s, one (or more) of which will include the Glendale and Holly Hills islands of Arapahoe County. We will likely not share HD’s 1 and 3 anymore with Arapahoe County.

On the Senate side, it is easy to imagine that SD31 will not include any of Denver. They tend to number the SD’s so the last districts are in Denver, so that means 32-35. There will have to be a small portion of Denver that is added a district largely made up of another county. My personal preference would be for the Glendale/Holly Hills area to be added to a predominatly ArapCo district creating only one multi-county SD.

On the congressional map, Denver slips in the amount of CD1 they will have, going to 85% from the currently approx. 90%. Hopefully the remaining 15% will all come from only one county, probably ArapCo. Last time, a mapping error put 4 voters from Jeffco in CD1 which was just an unnecessarily ugly cut.