Public Comments

Please consider the Schuster map - it just makes sense. - Northern CD2 is D+1.5%. Southern CD3 is R+1.4%. Wildly competitive. -Keeps Mesa and Garfield together with their shared economies, laborshed migration, and extractive industries - GJ must have a major population center cousin in any map. GJ and Ft. Collins have more in common as big suburban, geographically isolated, university town, fast-growing cities than GJ has in common with Pueblo or Boulder. - Gets urban Boulder away from the Western Slope - Keeps Roaring Fork Valley - Glenwood, Eagle, Aspen, Vail whole - Keeps San Luis Valley and Pueblo whole - Creates THREE COMPETITIVE DISTRICTS in Colorado - that's one more than the current Second Staff Map. This is better

Please,please consider the Schuster map making western Colorado districts more competitive. Colorado Communities are not well served by dynasties under any one political party. A meaningful dialog in Colorado must continue!

Stop letting the metro areas speak for the rural communities. Our voice matters!

When something isn't broken why fix it? The newest 9/23 Legislative redistricting map looks like it will separate more neighborhoods, bus routes, school attendance zones ... with it's stair step approach. CSU and Front Range Community College in Fort Collins are in the same district presently but the new map will put them in different districts, Why? The old HD 52 & HD 53 were separated by a pretty distinct & consistent land mark in College Ave but the new map seems much more arbitrary. Why? If it isn't broken please don't try to fix it. I know your work is complicated and time consuming and I appreciate all your hard work. Thanks, Tim Gosar

Thank you, once again, to the entire Legislative Commission. Throughout you have listened to our comments and tried to balance difficult issues. I appreciate most of all that when Arvadans came out to ask that for SENATE DISTRICT 19 you try to keep Jeffco-Westminster and north Arvada together. This makes a tremendous amount of sense because of our shared COMMUNITIES OF INTERESTS centered around Jeffco Schools, since attendance areas cross the city boundaries, our traffic flow and infrastructure on major arteries like 88th/86thParkway/ CO72, Indiana, and Wadsworth, our intergovernmental agreements, libraries, and mental health services. This is especially important for school finance issues at the State Legislature. Jeffco Schools is central to the quality of life in North Jeffco and having consistent representation is essential to ensuring that our kids and teachers and staff have the best opportunities for good experiences. Again, thank you. This cannot have been an easy commission to work on, and you have at all times made a bona fide effort to take public comments to heart and to balance competing interests.

Regarding the North_I25_Corridor I think the 1st draft plan for House Rep (seats 52 and 53) is better than the 2nd draft plan. It keeps the districts similar to the past and will require our rep to consider both liberal and conservative viewpoints in the district. It is easier to see which district I am in because of the US 287 dividing line. The proposed Senate district 14 is good as proposed. Thanks, Tom Hoehn

I am concerned that the needs and interests of rural Coloradans in the counties of Teller, Park, Chaffee and Fremont counties will be overshadowed by the interests of suburbia if these counties are lumped in with Jefferson County and other suburban communities. The June preliminary plan contains the map that best represents the needs of the four rural counties mentioned above. If these counties are no longer going to be in the Fifth Congressional District, they should be at the very least included in the Third Congressional District.

After reviewing the final redistricting map to be presented to the Colorado Supreme Court, I find that the map has more to do with politics than geographical representation. I had hoped that an independent commission would have done a better job. I believe that a computer could have drawn a redistricting map that was more uniform and more nearly represented the demographics of its residents. Previous maps drawn by commission staff were clearly more representative of residents. I hope that the State Supreme Court will reject the final map and draw up its own.

I am appalled that on the latest map my city of Loveland is placed with the Eastern Plains! We have much, much more in common with Fort Collins, Larimer County, Longmont, and Boulder then we do with the Eastern Plains. We are more than a farming area, with much industry and higher education. It looks strange to cut out Loveland from Fort Collins when we are so highly integrated with Fort Collins through business and education. Please place Loveland back into a Congressional District with Larimer County.

Members of the Colorado Independent Legislative Redistricting Commission and Commission Staff - Attached please find a memo laying out comparisons between CLLARO / CBLC Plan submitted on September 18, 2021 and the Kottwitz House Plan (Hp. 005) and Barnett Senate Plan (Sp. 005) including the impact of a given concentration of minority groups and the ability to elect their preferred candidate. This memo will lay out a number of deficiencies in the Kottwitz House Plan and Barnett Senate Plan respectively. The analysis in this memo will refer specifically to HD32, HD35, HD55, HD61, HD64, HD2 in the Kottwitz Plan and SD3, SD24, SD28 in the Barnett Plan. Many of those deficiencies are centered in a misplaced focus on reaching a specific percentage of Latinos or people of color more broadly without regard to whether those communities have sufficient voting power to elect their preferred candidate. When such errors are made, it can result in a district that is not an effective minority district, given the factors defined above. Maintaining effective minority districts is necessary to meet the constitutional requirements laid out in Amendment Z, which states: “No map may be approved by the Commission or given effect by the Supreme Court if it has been drawn for the purpose of or results in the denial or abridgement of the right of any citizen to vote on account of that person’s race or membership in a language minority group, including diluting the impact of that racial or language minority group’s electoral influence. Additionally, both the Kottwitz and Barnett plans appear to skip constitutional requirements to maintain communities of interest and political jurisdictions in favor of increasing competitiveness. While CLLARO submitted plans that have a large number of competitive districts, we did so after meeting all previous constitutional criteria. The following examples provided appear to show arbitrary splits of political jurisdictions and communities of interest in order to achieve competitiveness. Please feel free to contact me via email with any questions. Sincerely, Alex Apodaca-Cobell