Democrats trying to redraw Colorado's congressional map before the 2028 elections are running into a problem they did not script: the Colorado Supreme Court will not give them an answer. More than fifty days after Republicans challenged two redistricting ballot measures, the court has issued no ruling, and the backers of the initiative are now openly pleading for speed.
In a court filing submitted Tuesday, proponents of the measures asked the justices to expedite their decision, warning that the prolonged silence is sapping momentum and scaring off volunteers. The New York Times reported that the delay has left Democratic organizers uncertain whether they can still get the proposals before voters in time.
The stakes are not small. Democrats have identified Colorado as one of their top three redistricting targets nationally, alongside New York and Virginia. If the ballot measures survive, proponents hope to carve as many as three new blue-leaning congressional districts, a swing that could reshape the state's delegation for two election cycles.
The Democratic effort involves two linked ballot proposals. One would authorize mid-decade redistricting, something the Colorado Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional back in 2003. The second would go further, installing a temporary gerrymandered map for the 2028 and 2030 elections, effectively bypassing Colorado's independent redistricting commission until the next census.
That commission was created precisely to keep politicians' hands off the map-drawing process. The second ballot measure would sideline it.
Republicans challenged both proposals in April, arguing they violate Colorado's single-issue requirement for ballot measures. The two proposals carry disclaimers linking them to each other, which opponents say proves they are entangled rather than independent questions. The court has sat on the challenge ever since.
In their filing, the proponents did not hold back about what the wait is costing them:
"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."
That language tells you something about where the campaign stands. When you have to beg a court for a timeline, the ground game is not going well.
Colorado is not the only state where Democrats have tried to redraw congressional lines through ballot measures, and not the only state where courts have stepped in.
In Virginia, the state Supreme Court struck down a Democrat-backed mid-decade redistricting map that voters had narrowly approved. The National Review reported that the rejected map would have created ten Democrat-favoring congressional districts and only one Republican-favoring district, potentially netting Democrats up to four additional House seats. The court found that the legislature had made procedural errors in placing the constitutional amendment on the ballot, rendering the referendum null and void.
The Virginia ruling came after the Republican National Committee mounted a legal challenge. RNC Chairman Joe Gruters did not hold back: "Democrats just learned that when you try to rig elections, you lose."
The Virginia Supreme Court's majority opinion was blunt. It stated that the constitutional violation "incurably taints the resulting referendum vote and nullifies its legal efficacy." The 4-3 ruling found that Democratic legislators had put the amendment to voters in "an unprecedented manner", despite 51.33 percent of voters approving it.
That narrow margin of public support did not save the measure. Neither did the roughly $100 million spent campaigning on it, nor the $5.2 million Virginia taxpayers spent on the special election itself. Colorado has its own history of losing legal fights it chose to pick, and the Virginia experience suggests courts are not inclined to let procedural shortcuts slide, even when voters have already weighed in.
Democrats have framed redistricting ballot measures as grassroots democracy. But the mechanics tell a different story. In both Virginia and Colorado, the party identified states where mid-decade map changes could flip multiple House seats, then pursued ballot measures designed to bypass the normal redistricting process and the commissions or legislatures that oversee it.
In Virginia, a lower court had already ruled on three separate grounds that Democrats illegally placed the amendment on the ballot. Those grounds included an invalid special session expansion, improper ballot placement, and failure to publish the amendment three months before the election, as the Washington Free Beacon detailed.
Jason Snead, executive director of the Honest Elections Project, said the Virginia Supreme Court had "an excellent opportunity to deliver a clear ruling that you cannot short-circuit the order here in Virginia for raw political power." The court took that opportunity.
Now Colorado's proponents face a similar dynamic. Their two ballot measures are designed to work in tandem, one to lift the constitutional ban on mid-decade redistricting, the other to install a favorable map immediately. Republicans argue that packaging them as separate single-issue measures is a legal fiction. The court's extended silence may itself be a signal that the justices see complications the proponents would rather not discuss.
Ballot measure campaigns run on deadlines. Petition drives need volunteers who believe the effort will reach voters. Donors need assurance their money is not wasted on a proposal a court will toss. The longer the Colorado Supreme Court waits, the harder it becomes for proponents to maintain the organizational energy required to qualify for the ballot.
The proponents' own filing acknowledges this. They are not merely asking for a legal ruling, they are asking for rescue from a ticking clock. Every week without a decision is a week of uncertainty that discourages the people they need most: the signers, the canvassers, the small-dollar contributors who fuel a ground campaign.
Meanwhile, the 2003 precedent looms. The Colorado Supreme Court already ruled more than two decades ago that mid-decade redistricting violates state law. Proponents are now asking voters to override that precedent by constitutional amendment, but first they have to get past the same court that set the precedent in the first place.
Courts across the country have shown increasing willingness to check aggressive redistricting maneuvers, whether they come from the left or the right. Recent Supreme Court rulings have repeatedly caught progressive legal strategies off guard, and state high courts have followed suit. The Virginia outcome is the most direct parallel, but it fits a broader pattern in which courts are declining to rubber-stamp procedurally dubious power grabs, no matter how many voters a campaign can mobilize after the fact.
Democrats have identified Colorado, Virginia, and New York as the three states most vital to their 2028 redistricting plans. Virginia and New York are described as potentially providing a bigger haul of newly gerrymandered seats than Colorado. But the Virginia path is now closed by court order, and Colorado's path is blocked, at least for now, by judicial silence.
The strategy depends on speed. Mid-decade redistricting only works if new maps are in place before the next congressional election. Every month of litigation is a month lost. And if the Colorado Supreme Court ultimately sides with Republicans on the single-issue question, the entire effort collapses.
There are still significant unanswered questions. No individual names have surfaced publicly for the organizations leading the Democratic push or the Republican plaintiffs who filed the challenge. The specific case name and docket number remain unreported. And the court has given no public indication of when, or whether, it will rule before the window for ballot qualification closes.
Courts weighing in on election procedures is nothing new. But the Colorado situation stands out because the court's inaction is itself doing the work that a ruling would do. By not deciding, the justices are effectively running out the clock on a campaign that needs certainty to survive.
Democrats built their Colorado redistricting push on the assumption that they could move fast enough to outrun legal challenges. They drafted two ballot measures, launched petition drives, and counted on a favorable or at least timely court ruling to keep the effort alive.
Instead, they got fifty days of silence, and counting.
The independent redistricting commission that Colorado voters created exists for a reason: to keep exactly this kind of partisan map-drawing out of the process. When political actors try to bypass the structures voters put in place, courts have increasingly been willing to say no.
Whether the Colorado Supreme Court says no, or simply lets the clock say it for them, the result may be the same.
If your redistricting plan depends on a court giving you a green light it has no obligation to give, and on voters not noticing you are trying to sideline the commission they created, maybe the plan was never as democratic as the branding suggested.
