Creating Colorado’s 8th congressional district

Abstract

This paper looks at the creation of Colorado’s newest congressional district (CD 8) to explore the recycling of political power that occurs in redistricting despite struggles to challenge the status quo. Located in the North Denver Metro (NDM), the district is home to the fastest growing population and largest concentration of Hispanics in the state. Using analysis of public feedback, commission meetings, and walking interviews with commissioners and participants, I tell the story of CD 8 as a focal point of Colorado’s first independent and participatory redistricting process. Most academic literature on redistricting revolves around how to better detect gerrymandering by measuring adherence to criteria like compactness and competitiveness. This paper, alternatively, makes a much-needed intervention through a qualitative analysis of the production of CD 8 in order to demonstrate how redistricting draws lines around not only districts but also the realm of political possibility.

Keywords

• Redistricting
• electoral geography
• critical cartography
• Colorado
• Latinx geographies