At midnight on Monday, Senate Democrats defeated their own redistricting bill by talking past midnight.

After debating the measure for four hours, and through a number of proposed amendments, the Democrats decided they’d take their chances in court, and kept the clock running.

At about 11:45, Republicans tried to force a vote on the bill, but the Democrats shut them down, and kept filibustering.

Senate Majority Leader John Morse, D-Colorado Springs, said late Monday that his party was focused on building the legislative record for a potential lawsuit over redistricting. He said that Speaker of the House Frank McNulty, R-Highlands Ranch, had made it clear Monday afternoon that the redistricting map will be settled in court, so the Democrats had only one course of action left.

“The speaker had already told us it was going to wind up in court,” said Morse. “That changed it from a legislative process to a judicial process.”

Sen. Keith King, R-Colorado Springs, called the Democrats’ move Monday night a “fraud and a scam,” and Sen. Bill Cadman, R-Colorado Springs, said that the “voices of the people of Colorado have been silenced.”

Though the bill was technically laid over until Tuesday, it’s essentially dead, because Democrats don’t have enough time to get the measure through two readings in the Senate, a committee hearing in the House, and two full votes on the House floor.

The only redistricting map left alive at this point is the House Republican map, which both sides have acknowledged will never pass the Democratically-controlled Senate. That means that either a special legislative session will have to be called, or the matter will wind up in court, to likely be decided by a judge.

A special session is unlikely, many legislators have said, because it would probably prove to be a waste of time and money.

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