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Although census data are used for many things, there's only one constitutional purpose: to allocate seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. Each state gets a certain number of seats, based on its population, and then it's up to the state's legislature to create districts for those seats.
That's a fairly simple process in Wyoming or Montana, since their populations are of such sensible dimensions that the entire state is one congressional district.
But Colorado's population grew from 3.3 million in 1990 to about 4.3 million last year, which means that we not only have to draw new boundaries to reflect population shifts, but also that we need seven districts instead of six.
There are some who predict that adding a representative will increase Colorado's clout in Washington, but that would be true only if the delegation presented a united front. If one recent dispute is typical, that's not about to happen.
Rep. Diana DeGette, a Denver Democrat, introduced a bill to set aside 1.35 million acres of BLM land in Colorado as wilderness. Rep. Scott McInnis, a Grand Junction Republican, says most of that land is in his district, and DeGette should mind her own business. It would be easier to take McInnis seriously if he didn't collect more campaign money from the metro area than he does from his own district.
(In the 1998 cycle, 34.3 percent of McInnis's individual
contributions of more than $200 came from the metro area;
only 26.3 percent was from his 3rd District. As the Bible
puts it, where your treasure is, there will your heart
be also.
)
Metro residents are apparently free to participate in
rural political decisions just as long as their involvement
is limited to giving money to McInnis. Anything else
constitutes outside interference.
Such disputes may be inevitable if our representatives are truly representative -- after all, Colorado is a contentious place. The General Assembly will also be a contentious place when it goes into special session on Sept. 20 to draw new congressional boundaries.
The districts are supposed to be equal in population, while avoiding racial discrimination. They're also supposed to respect municipal and county boundaries while preserving communities of interest. And they're supposed to be geographically contiguous.
It's impossible to do all those things at once, of course. Somebody always gets shafted in the process. It happened to us in Chaffee County after the 1980 census.
We got put into the Fifth District with Colorado Springs. Never mind that El Paso County is a right-thinking zone where Rush Limbaugh might get accused of being too liberal. Just ponder the practical politics.
We're a public-land county, and it would work best for us if our representative sat on the Resources or Agriculture Committee. But the vast bulk of the district's population was in Colorado Springs where it was important to have someone on the Military Installations and Facilities Subcommittee of the National Security Committee.
Fortunately, the redistricting after the 1990 census put us in the immense Third District, which covers more than half the state. It stretches from Pueblo to Grand Junction, and neither city is big enough to dominate the district. That makes for a lot of travel for candidates, but it also means that we all matter.
Now our district has about 116,000 too many people (on busy summer weekends, it probably has 800,000 too many people, but that's another matter), and so some adjustments need to be made.
The simplest course would be to put most of Pueblo County, with its 141,472 residents, in another district. But that district would almost certainly have to include portions of El Paso County, and Pueblo probably wouldn't be any happier to have a Springs congressman than we would.
Other configurations would be just as annoying to people
somewhere, and perhaps the legislature should try a
different tack, and focus more on communities of
interest
rather than geographical
contiguity.
But it would start with geography. Take our two largest cities. Democratic Denver gets a district, and so does Republican Colorado Springs.
That's two of the seven seats. The other five would be apportioned by interest group, regardless of contiguity. For instance, Grand Junction and Sterling are far apart on the map, but irrigated agriculture is vital to both cities' economy. It's a long drive through intervening reality from Boulder to Aspen, but the two cities have more in common than they have with what lies between them.
Without too much work, the legislature should be able to come up with these five Colorado districts: Soccer Mom Suburban, Blue Collar Suburban, Agribusiness, Lotus Land and, of course, the Unemployables. And even if the resulting map looked like something produced by a kaleidoscope, we'd all get better representation.
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