The Democrats behind a 2028 redistricting push in Colorado have grown increasingly concerned that the state Supreme Court’s delay in ruling on the validity of their ballot measures could endanger the effort.
“The delay creates uncertainty amongst petition signers, volunteers and supporters about the viability of the measure, and further erodes the fundamental right to the initiative power,” proponents of the initiative wrote in a court filing submitted on Tuesday seeking to expedite the court’s decision.
Colorado is one of Democrats’ top targets in the next phase of the national redistricting wars, which resulted in a flurry of redrawn maps for the 2026 midterms but have now moved on to what more can be done in time for 2028.
In Colorado, Democrats hope to draw as many as three new blue-leaning districts ahead of congressional elections in 2028. Only Virginia and New York could provide a bigger haul of newly gerrymandered seats for Democrats for the next election cycle. All three states are vital to Democrats’ plans to draw even with — or possibly ahead of — Republicans in reshaping congressional boundaries.
Before a new map can be drawn in Colorado, however, voters must approve two ballot measures. The first would allow the state to redraw its maps in the middle of a decade, which the state’s high court ruled in 2003 was unconstitutional. The second would allow the state to install a temporary gerrymandered map for 2028 and 2030, bypassing the state’s independent redistricting commission until the next census.
The measures came before the Colorado Supreme Court after Republicans sued to block them. Both parties have been waiting for more than 50 days for the court to rule.
Scott Gessler, a lawyer for the Republican challengers, said in an email that he did not find the court’s timing particularly abnormal, especially if they were planning to issue a written opinion.
“That takes much longer,” Mr. Gessler said. “I think the timeline clearly shows that the court will issue a written opinion.”
Proponents of the measures say the lingering uncertainty threatens to slow momentum, both in activists and in donors, and organizers are worried that the delay could make it harder to gather the needed signatures to qualify for the ballot in November.
Though the Colorado Supreme Court is nonpartisan, each of its seven members was nominated by Democratic governors.
“The Supreme Court’s foot-dragging risks stripping voters of their chance to weigh in on the most important issues in this election,” said Curtis Hubbard, a spokesman for the group Coloradans for a Level Playing Field, which is supporting the redistricting effort. “If the court can effectively run out the clock on citizen initiatives, it casts a dark cloud over the entire process.”
Each measure requires signatures from roughly 125,000 registered Colorado voters. The deadline for signatures to get on the November ballot is Aug. 3.
Because signature gathering can be a wildly unpredictable process, the Democratic organizers are aiming to file roughly 200,000 signatures per initiative. And they still have a ways to go: According to a legal brief filed on Tuesday, organizers have accumulated roughly 43,000 signatures per initiative.
Gathering those signatures is expensive. The signature-gathering effort has cost nearly $1.4 million so far, according to court filings. Mr. Hubbard and other Democrats in the state are worried that the longer the court delays, the more wary donors to the effort could become, not wanting to waste their money on a cause that might not pass legal muster.
The legal questions are complex. Colorado has a clear state law that ballot measures must deal with a single issue. For that reason, Democrats in Colorado drafted the two separate proposals — one to change the state rule on mid-decade redistricting, and one to install a new map — to put before voters. But at the bottom of each proposal is a disclaimer: each proposal takes effect only if the other proposal is also approved by voters this November.
As a result of that unusual language, Republicans in the state challenged the proposals in April, saying they violated the single-issue requirement.
“By tying the two initiatives together through use of the effective date clauses, the proponents are connecting two separate subjects, in violation of the single-subject requirement,” said Mr. Gessler, the lawyer. “This is effectively a way to avoid the single-subject requirement by forcing voters to accept or reject both initiatives as a package deal.”
