Colorado ballot issue seeks to balance political parties' influence on voting maps

A pair of proposed amendments to the Colorado Constitution, dubbed Amendments Y and Z, take aim at "the most important voting matter no one has ever heard of," according to one backer. Their target: Gerrymandering. Gerrymandering is stacking the deck in favor of one political party by drawing political district maps in its favor. In practice, opponents say, gerrymandering removes the “representative” part of representative democracy.“Regardless of what you believe — that Colorado is gerrymandered or not — almost everyone agrees it's good public policy to explicitly prohibit gerrymandering,” Fair Maps Colorado campaign co-chair Joe Zimlich said. "Almost everyone in our state, far higher than anywhere else, acknowledges that gerrymandering is a national crisis or a national issue. So preventing that in Colorado is important."Amendments Y and Z are simple enough: Nonpartisan legislative staff draw up maps for congressional and state legislative districts. A tri-partisan commission of four Republicans, four Democrats and four voters unaffiliated with a political party review them. Eight of the 12, which must include two unaffiliated voters, must vote to approve the map.