A version of this story was published in The Denver Post.

Colorado was supposed to be an exception to the bitter fights over gerrymandering that define redistricting in much of the nation.

Unusually, the Democratic governor gave up the chance to stack the map-drawing commission in his party's favor. Instead, he pushed for a balanced commission that would approve the new maps by consensus.

Bob Loevy, a retired political science professor and Republican, wholeheartedly embraced this bipartisan vision. He was optimistic that the commission's 11 members -- five Republicans, five Democrats and one independent -- could craft fair maps guided by the needs of voters. But as the process unfolded, Loevy says, he grew disillusioned

Much of the public testimony he heard seemed to have been manufactured by Democrats and Republicans to justify highly partisan lines.

And Loevy realized that the commission's taxpayer-funded staff wasn't drawing most of the maps. Instead, Republicans and Democrats on the commission were working off-hours with teams of outside consultants who were crafting competing partisan maps.

The consultants were not on the payroll of the commission -- or even of the political parties. Instead, at least some of their salaries were paid by nonprofit groups who had no legal obligation to disclose who their funders were or how they spent their money.

Loevy, who was named to the commission by the state's chief justice, called the process a "marionette show," in which the outside mapping experts served as puppeteers.

Others in Colorado called his perspective naïve.

"I thought the whole process was democracy in action," said Wellington Webb, a former Democratic mayor of Denver who was serving on the reapportionment commission for the second time. Loevy's concerns were "the comments of a political science professor," Webb said. "That's not the way it works in real life."

ProPublica has been tracking the process as states carry out their once-a-decade redrawing of their electoral maps. Several states have overhauled their redistricting processes to make them more transparent and more accountable to voters. That by no means ended the personal and partisan battles over map lines. We've explored the way politicians and other special interests have used shadowy nonprofits and manufactured testimony to manipulate the redistricting process in California, Florida, Massachusetts, Minnesota, and elsewhere. Other news outlets have reported on similar tactics being used in New Jersey, Nevada and Arizona.

Many of these states have seen their redistricting process mired in bitter legal battles. Hardly any started with the bipartisan optimism that characterized Colorado's public process.

An Early Start

Months before that public redistricting process began, political insiders in Colorado organized nonprofit organizations that would pay for redistricting consultants and legal efforts.

Public records offer scant glimpses of the interests that supported and the people who helped run these nonprofit groups. Among those identified by name are two prominent real estate developers, a former Republican congressman, Colorado firefighters and two of Colorado's teacher unions.

Democrats got out-of-state help from The Foundation for the Future, the national Democratic redistricting strategy group whose donors include trial lawyers, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the AFL-CIO and John Hunting, a wealthy environmentalist from Michigan.