A bill that would make the Colorado legislature look at creating competitive Congressional districts during the redistricting process cleared the state Senate on Thursday.
The idea is designed to give voters a truer choice in elections and also take some of the political heat out of the normally fiery redistricting debates, said the bill’s sponsor, Senate Majority Leader Ken Gordon, D-Denver.
“In competitive districts, voters pick the elected officials,” Gordon said a day earlier in urging his colleagues to support it. “In safe seats, the elected officials pick the voters.”
The bill, Senate Bill 198, would put district competitiveness at the end of a list of criteria the legislature must look at when creating the districts. Those criteria include keeping the districts of equal population size, not purposefully diluting minority votes and keeping similar communities together.
The bill passed the Senate 21-12 Thursday, with both Democrats and Republicans voting against it.
During debate on the bill Wednesday, Sen. Bill Cadman, R-Colorado Springs, said the new requirement would effectively weaken the existing ones.
“You can’t add a component without diluting the previous requirements,” he said.
And Senate Minority Leader Andy McElhany, R-Colorado Springs, said in many cases keeping similar communities together will be in conflict with creating competitive districts. (McElhany, though, voted for the bill Thursday.)
Sen. Josh Penry, R-Grand Junction, disagreed.
“I don’t think you break up a community of interest but to an extent you can finesse a community of interest to make it more competitive than it would have been,” he said.
Gordon said the lack of competitive districts means that many Congressional races are decided in the party primaries. That, he said, in turn means the officials being elected are more politically polarized and less likely to work together than lawmakers from competitive seats.
Gordon said only two states – Washington and Arizona – currently mention competitiveness in their redistricting laws.
“It’s sort of revolutionary,” he said. “… I think it’s a big step forward.”