A Colorado experiment in non-partisan electoral maps could point the way to a less polarized future for the U.S.

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Colorado’s eighth congressional district carves a zigzagging path around the northeastern suburbs of Denver, across plains once settled by homesteaders and around the beef processing plants that, today, make up some of the region’s biggest employers.

The district is new, added in 2022 as a response to the swelling population in the state, which has made itself a haven for newcomers. Political affiliations within the district are so evenly divided that polls have shown virtually no difference in support between Republicans and Democrats. The uncertain outcome has made the eighth district a fiercely contested piece of American electoral turf, with the winner likely to be important to determining the balance of power in the U.S. Capitol.

But the district also represents an ambitious effort to envision a new way of doing politics in the U.S.

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Unlike most American electoral boundaries, the lines that make up the eighth district were not drawn by politicians from one party seeking to cement an advantage through gerrymandering. They were, instead, drafted by an independent commission established in Colorado in 2018, part of a small but meaningful push to ease partisan divisions in a country riven by dark warnings of looming authoritarianism.

“Over the last 20 years, there’s been a steady deterioration in the effectiveness of our democracy,” said Kent Thiry, a wealthy Colorado-based businessman who has poured tens of millions of dollars into a series of efforts to end gerrymandering in the U.S. and change the way votes are cast.

The time has come to “restore a fresh democracy” in the U.S., he said. A fractured polity in a nuclear superpower has global consequences, he noted. “A relatively dysfunctional democracy even creates geopolitical risk.”

Colorado forms part of a national bid to use independent commissions to draw lines for voting districts, and change primary elections to allow anyone to cast a ballot. Advocates are also pushing for ranked-choice voting, which they say encourages candidates to seek support from a broader swath of the electorate.

It’s all in hopes of creating a system that rewards centrism over extremism.

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Colorado’s eighth district suggests what might be possible. A poll earlier this month showed a gap of just 0.2 percentage points between former police officer Gabe Evans, the Republican candidate, and pediatrician Yadira Caraveo, the Democratic incumbent. The district is nearly 40 per cent Latino or Hispanic, and Mr. Evans has been careful to avoid the incendiary rhetoric employed by Donald Trump on immigration. In a recent debate, he condemned “any sort of racist statements.” Ms. Caraveo, meanwhile, has been openly critical of her own party’s approach to the southern border.

The creation of a competitive vote is a direct rebuke to the certainty sought by generations of gerrymanderers, who have carved oddly shaped districts to dilute the votes of rivals and concentrate those of their own.

One of the goals for Colorado was to “create the maximum number of competitive seats,” said Bernie Buescher, a Democrat who is Colorado’s former secretary of state. He was one of the chief proponents of independent redistricting in the state.

Competitive races, he said, tend to produce legislators more attuned to the concerns of voters.

“A solid majority of folks want their legislature just to do the work, not make crazy speeches and statements,” Mr. Buescher said. “Do the work. Pass a budget. Fix our roads. Deal with the homeless problem.”

He points west for evidence that change is possible. Fifteen years ago, California was teetering on the edge of a financial crisis, its legislature incapable of passing a proper budget and its bond rating the worst in the country. The Economist in 2009 declared it “the ungovernable state.” By then, however, voters had already passed a proposition to end gerrymandering by giving redistricting power to citizens. New maps came into effect in 2012.

In subsequent years, California saw improved fiscal circumstances, including recent budget surpluses. The new process has made way for more centrist candidates and more effective governance, Mr. Buescher said.

A series of other states may see change after elections next month.

In Ohio, voters will decide whether to remove politicians from deciding electoral boundaries. Ballot measures in Idaho, Nevada, Oregon and Washington will determine whether to change the way voting is conducted there, too.

Those efforts, however, fall well short of a national movement. And change has brought controversy.

In Alaska, voters are being asked whether they want to repeal ranked-choice voting, and voters in Missouri are being asked to support a pre-emptive ban on that way of casting ballots. In California, Governor Gavin Newsom last year vetoed a bill that would have mandated independent redistricting in all major cities and counties.

In states where change is on the ballot, meanwhile, opponents have brought fierce opposition. One cartoon circulating in Idaho purports to show “Rank choice world,” depicting a street with two women in burkas walking past a sign advertising “Drag queen grooming hour” at a library, as leftist protesters engage in a bloody brawl.

Still, advocates of U.S. electoral reform say history has shown that seemingly lost causes can reach a point at which they begin to take effect with great speed. Take the legalization of cannabis, or marriage equality – or, in decades past, universal suffrage.

In Colorado, creating an independent commission was as much about rejecting the past as it was about hoping for something new, said JulieMarie Shepherd Macklin, a political scientist at the University of Colorado Boulder who was one of the state’s redistricting commissioners.

“It really was a mandate to say, ‘We’re tired of things being done in the way they’ve been done,’” she said.

The state’s new districts were designed to encircle communities of interest – people who broadly share circumstances and geographies – with a process for soliciting public opinion that included 44 hearings.

The state’s independently drawn boundaries “scored well on metrics of competitiveness and representation,” according to a review published by Princeton University’s Innovations for Successful Societies.

“The more competitive a district is, the higher the likelihood that voters can elect someone truly of their choosing,” Ms. Shepherd Macklin said.

“The fact that the polling numbers are so close, and that the district is one of the top watched nationally – I take that as a mark of we did our job well.”