The Colorado Independent Redistricting Commission has completed its work at redrawing the lines for state legislative and congressional districts for the next 10 years. With regards to how their work affected Jefferson County I think the commission deserves a B- for the completed project. They managed, in my opinion, to create a mostly purple map which means that newly redrawn districts can be competitive for either party. That is the primary accomplishment of the new maps for Jefferson County. Anyone can view the new maps at www.redistricting.colorado.gov and zoom into their particular address to find their representative under the maps section of that website.

For my purposes in this article, I will describe how redistricting affects Jefferson County. Most of Jefferson County is now in CD-7 with Rep Ed Perlmutter as their Congressman. The first exception is a small portion of the far northwest part of the county which is now in CD-2 represented by Joe Neguse. The second exception is a large part of south Jeffco which mostly traded representation from Representative Diana DeGette of Denver to Representative Jason Crow of Aurora. Personally, I would preferred to have Jefferson County become one Congressional district but the commission saw things differently. Jefferson County will now be represented by 5 different state senators rather than 4. Two of those districts SD4 and SD16 are multi county districts shared with other counties. SD19, 20 and 22 are wholly contained within the county. The Secretary of State’s website has not provided voter registration statistics for these new districts. Colorado State Senators are elected for four year terms. SD4 will up for election in 2022 along with SD20 and SD22. SD16 and SD19 will be up for election in 2024. Because assemblies dictate who the party nominees will be for legislative office what is certain is that other counties will have impact on Jefferson County elections. This is true for contests for the State House of Representatives as well. What used to be HD22 on the old map has now been split up into three districts. The area east of Pierce Avenue is now part of HD38 and shares a representative with part of Arapahoe County. The rest of HD22 was split between a new HD25 which is partly in south Jeffco and the rest being in Evergreen the old HD25. The rest of the old HD22 is in the new HD28. Other multi county districts from the new map are the new HD24 which is mostly Arvada. Part of the new HD29 and HD35 are in the both the Jefferson County and Adams County portions of Westminster. The new HD29 will also be in part of Broomfield. The influence of other counties in Jefferson County elections is the main change from redistricting. All this means is that people from other counties will have a say along with Jefferson County residents as to who the members of the legislature will be beginning in 2023. This is not anything new. We had two multi county districts from the last maps the new maps moved that up to five.

Joe Webb is the former chairman of the Jeffco Republican party.