It is now up to the Colorado Supreme Court as to whether we will have a number of “competitive districts” in Colorado’s eight-member delegation to the U.S. House of Representatives in Washington, D.C.

A redistricting plan sent to the state high court by the Colorado congressional redistricting committee provides for only one competitive district, a district where there might be serious competition between the Democratic and Republican parties as to which party will win the seat in the November general elections.

That one competitive seat is located north of Denver and extends up toward Greeley. It contains a large percentage of Hispanic voters.

Colorado, as a result of the 2020 U.S. Census, is entitled to eight members of the U.S. House of Representatives. In addition to the one competitive seat, the congressional redistricting commission essentially recommended four “safe Democratic” seats and three “safe Republican” seats.

As advocates of constitutional republicanism as well as political scientists, we dislike safe Democratic and safe Republican seats. They are the ultimate form of gerrymandering, the drawing of district lines in such a way that one political party always wins the seat, no matter how the statewide electorate may be voting. They are called “safe” seats because, no matter what the political mood statewide, the seat is “safe” for that one favored political party.

We call on the Colorado Supreme Court, after reviewing the work of the congressional redistricting commission, to reject the commission plan and order the commission to create a revised plan with a minimum of four competitive seats. That will go a long way toward reducing gerrymandering in the Colorado delegation to the U.S. House of Representatives.

We admire the efforts of the congressional redistricting commission. Created by a vote of the people in 2018, the commission charted the course for ending gerrymandering in Colorado. They generated a number of congressional redistricting plans, they held public hearings throughout the state on those plans, and they chose one of those plans to send to the Colorado Supreme Court for final evaluation.

They did much of the congressional redistricting job as mandated by the voters. Along the way, however, we believe that the commission’s work was the victim of manipulative lobbying by the Democratic and Republican parties.

There has been some coverage in the news media of how both political parties hired highly skilled, experienced, and expensive lobbyists to lobby the commission to create safe seats rather than competitive seats. These lobbyist’s pay checks came from anonymous donors whose names and the dollar amounts given were purposely, but unjustifiably, withheld from the public, a technique known as “dark money.”

The media have also reported how the political party lobbyists recruited average folks to speak at the commission’s statewide public hearings and coached them on what to say. Speakers were encouraged to not reveal their political party biases or point out how their testimony would help their political party gain a safe seat.

In our view, the strategy of the two political parties, never admitted, was to guide the discussion at the statewide hearings to such topics as “not splitting my county between two districts” and “giving more voting power to minorities.” These are important topics, for sure. The two political parties emphasized them because they did not want the commission discussing (1) gerrymandering and (2) creating competitive districts instead of safe districts.

One reason we know these political party techniques is that one of us served on the Colorado legislative redistricting commission in 2010. He saw firsthand that such hearings are often a marionette show, with the people testifying as marionettes and the political party consultants pulling the strings.

Why are we questioning those four safe Democratic and three safe Republican seats that the congressional redistricting commission sent to the Colorado Supreme Court for final approval?

Look at it this way. By creating seven safe seats out of eight, the commission abolished the general election for U.S. Representative for seven-eighths of the voters in Colorado. If the same political party always wins the November general election every two years (even-numbered years), the general election becomes meaningless. The real voting for U.S. Representative shifts to the party primary election, where only registered voters in the political party and unaffiliated voters can vote. People registered in the other political party are left out of the voting entirely.

There is a lot wrong with selecting members of the U.S House of Representatives in primaries. One problem is voter turnout. Whereas turnouts for general elections in November run at about 60%, the voter turnout in party primaries in August (in Colorado) is around 30% percent, half as much. That is a large number of people who lose their vote because they live in a safe (for one party or the other) district.

Another problem is that political party voters in primaries tend to be much less moderate or centrist than voters in the general election. That means Democratic primary voters tend to be liberal progressives and Republican primary voters gravitate toward right-leaning conservatism.

This results in polarization. Democrats elected to the House from safe Democratic seats are more liberal and Republicans elected from safe Republican seats are more conservative than their constituencies. The two sides have trouble getting along ideologically when they get to the U.S. House of Representatives on Capitol Hill in Washington.

Here is the saddest result of creating seven out of eight safe seats from Colorado in the U.S. House: Colorado voters will have little ability to affect national politics in the U.S. House of Representatives. No matter how the winds of national politics may blow – pro-Democratic or pro-Republican – it will have no effect on seven of Colorado’s eight House seats. The same political party – four for the Democrats and three for the Republicans – will win those seven safe seats every time.

Only the voters in Colorado’s one competitive district will have the ability to vote for one party or the other and have it effect the outcome of the election. Only the competitive district voters will be able to influence national politics and perhaps play a role in shifting control of the U.S House of Representatives from one political party to the other.

Finally, when the voters were deciding on creating the congressional redistricting commission, they were not told it would create safe Democratic and Republican seats. They were told it would end gerrymandering and create competitive districts.

Colorado’s Supreme Court justices, please hear us. The advantages of competitive districts over safe Democratic seats and safe Republican seats are well known. Please send the 2021 congressional redistricting plan for Colorado back to the redistricting commission and charge them to create several competitive districts.

When it comes to competitive districts, you are “the court of last resort.”

Bob Loevy and Tom Cronin write on Colorado and national issues and were longtime political science professors at Colorado College in Colorado Springs. Bob Loevy served on the 2010 Colorado Redistricting Commission for the state legislature.