January 12, 2021 04:34 PM UTC

2022 Redistricting thoughts:

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• by: vertigo700

I’ve actually been thinking a lot about redistricting and have some thoughts. If you go to https://www.census.gov/mycd/ you can actually see the specific populations of various districts including those in Colorado from 2019 estimates. Ideally a congressional district is supposed to have approx. 711,000.

Based on this, the Colorado districts with the most population over that number are (rounded to the nearest thousand):

CO-4: 868,000

CO-1: 853,000

CO-6: 828,000

CO-2: 824,000

CO-5: 820,000

CO-7: 809,000

CO-3: 757,000

Clearly CO-3 is the only one less than 800,00 so will need the littlest amount of adjustment. CO-4 and CO-1 clearly have the most people and so the new district would likely come out of those districts the most.

My suggestion: Create a southern Denver suburbs district. Current CO-1  is not just Denver. It actually contains a significant portion of the inner-ring suburbs in Arapahoe and Jefferson county including Englewood, and that area around Columbine High School. The new CO-1 should just be Denver exclusively. At 716,000 people it’s slightly bigger than a “preferred” district but I think Denverites would prefer to be their own district.

The new district would take the rest of CO-1, small portions of CO-6 (like Highlands Ranch, Littleton) since it is the third largest it definitely needs some trimming, southern JeffCo from CO-2 and CO-7 as well and northern Douglas County from CO-4. It certainly could be a lean Republican district but I am not sure it would be overwhelmingly so.

I’d also make some small changes to CO-3/CO-2/CO-4. Return Longmont to CO-2 as it has more in common with the northern Front Range cities like Boulder, Loveland and Ft. Collins than it does with the farming communities of the eastern planes. In exchange, CO-3 would get Summit, Grand and the remainder of Eagle counties. Also give CO-3 Chaffee County to balance CO-5’s population. Make some slight changes in rural Pueblo County to CO-4 to balance if need be. Doing these changes would make CO-3 truly a very competitive district. Lauren Boebert has proven herself unworthy of holding office and I think making her district more competitive would put someone in Congress who is a moderate instead of an extremist.