Utah 2020 Redistricting

[Oryxslayer]

There is also an issue with your commission map. As it stands right now, the commission adopted by the Utah legislature creates a 7 member advisory board. 5 of the members are appointed directly by the elected party leaders: 1 from the gov, and then one each by the majority and minority parties senate and HoR leadership. The remaining two are by the party leadership as a group; one from the combined minority party leadership, on from the combined majority party leadership. Any map needs approval of 5 commissioners at minimum, meaning some cooperation between the dual leadership teams is needed.

This means that if the legislature ends up adopting a commission selected map (depends on if McAdams survives 2020, by how much, and what the 2020 pres vote looks like in my eyes) they would still never draw out any incumbent GOP legislator. This means that while the "three seats in the Salt Lake corridor and then one in for the rest" is the better map in terms of COIs, it does not work when considering incumbent residency. Steward is in Farmington and Moore I think is in Ogden. The COI alignment would pair them together. With this in mind, the commission would utilize section F guidelines (following natural and geographic boundaries, barriers, and features) to create a map that separates incumbents. A map similar to this in its composition of the GOP seats maps more sense given this perspective.

UT01 starts in the north but stays north of Tavaputs in the east. UT02 starts in Stewards hom but then takes in the south of the state to the west of the main Rocky Wasatch Ridge. UT03 takes in the eastern area between Wasatch and the Tavaputs that makes up the Colorado plateau.

[Oryxslayer]

https://twitter.com/LoganZT1/status/1429913706033553417?s=20

Interestingly, the map in the image appears to have a uber-blue SLC+Park City district.

[Oryxslayer]

Why not just do something like this? UT-01 is north Utah. UT-02 is pretty much the southern half of the state. UT-03 is Provo/Orem/Lehi. UT-04 is entirely with Salt Lake County. Only two county splits.

Your map looks lot like my map, lol.

https://davesredistricting.org/join/24ee48f1-118a-4298-8c08-46bf00a2c317

your map is 100x worse because it combines box elder and tooele

lol,
I have the Wasatch front area to have there own districts, while the rest of the state be in one district.

It's horrible because there is no road from Box Elder southwards. Its all salt flats. That county can only be paired with the eastern urban corridor.

[Oryxslayer]

Today the Utah commission will be looking at public submissions.

[Oryxslayer]

LOL an independent commission drew that?  Look at that Salt Lake District.

I'm not quite sure what you tare talking about? There are like 20 proposed commission maps, click on the tabs at the top and the dropdown. The one at the front just so happened to be drawn by a subcommittee of taskmasters that included a former Republican congressman...so yeah it is a least change.

Not your fault, some other people already made the same UI mistake. I wouldn't be surprised if they stuck it at the front to ensure said plan has negative press.

[Oryxslayer]

The commission is sending the second best version of my third best congressional map to the state legislature.

So which the three maps getting sent to the legislature?

EDIT: Nevermind, @Redistrictnetwork provided. They are all a bit weird in their own ways.

[Oryxslayer]

Don’t look now, but from oral arguments at least 4/5 justices seem pretty sympathetic to plaintiffs. Not willing to make any guesses until oral arguments are finished, but still.

Oh yeah, totally forgot today was the day where the gerrymandering suit went before the Utah Supreme Court.


For those who don't know, this is a suit that alleges that it was both unconstitutional to go against the peoples vote and disempower the Redistricting Commission and unconstitutional to then pass a map that did not have their authority. The lower state court did not like the former of the arguments, but the Supreme Court heard both of them.

It would be honestly be a weirdly ideal moment for the Utah GOP to see a remap create a Biden won seat in SLC: District 2 which has a lot of SLC is open and anyone republican who wins would get the short stick automatically, and yet if Becky Edwards won the upcoming primary she could hold on depending on the seat, especially if she goes Indie. Oh and the potential for top-two shenanigans later in the decade if the 2024 initiative passes.

[Oryxslayer]

Does anyone recall what the commission maps looked like? Or did they not get there? The below seems like the obvious COI map (which has a super-safe D Biden+26 seat), and other reasonable and COI-oriented configurations in Salt Lake County-Utah County feel like they might leave a second seat at risk for the Republicans.

https://davesredistricting.org/join/ce9e4ab6-8cf4-497d-930c-945aa90ca86b

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/redistricting-2022-maps/utah/

Honestly most of the commission plans were pretty wack; Utah isn’t that hard of the state to draw a map for but they try some crazy stuff.

Other than the obvious partisan gerrymanders (which can be disregarded but the motive for ignoring COIs is pretty straightforward), all of the maps contain some WTF factor to them, when doing so is totally unnecessary. Strange.

I suspect it mostly has to do with mountain rages and lack of road connections in many areas. Like all counties north of Weber + Davis is 328 people above ideal, but to get the population to zero you have to cut a municipality in Davis. The geographic hurdles are not kind: no roads from Toole to Box Elder, none from Rich to Morgan, and 1 from Morgan to Weber. Which then sends you looking for alternatives that make the cuts more reasonable, and ends up without a district nested whole within SLC.

[Oryxslayer]

But you cited the exact perfect alignment - Davis-Weber-Box Elder-Cache-Rich is a perfect seat. Being 328 people above ideal just means a teeny-tiny split into Davis from Salt Lake (if you are actually going for perfect population equality, outside of maybe Iowa you'll always have to split counties) - or, alternatively, accepting districts that are very close in population but not 100% equal: There's no legal basis on which a 328-person deviation could ever be challenged.

Instead, the maps tend to rely on weird violations of what you cited above. For example, there are multiple commission maps that mostly look reasonable but put Tooele with the northern counties for no good reason (e.g., Orange 3-3, the best one IMO, or Purple 4-1 and Purple 2-3 (both of these have other weird stuff going on too)).

Purple 3-3 is the only one that draws a basically sane rendition of northern Utah, but then does weird things with the southern two districts. (I sort of understand; they seem to be trying to keep suburban Salt Lake County and Utah County in separate districts, presumably to favor incumbents.)

I drew the same district you're talking about in my map on page 4 of this topic almost two years ago. The map I drew had only two county splits, which is very good for a 4-district state. One of the splits was necessary on account of the county being significantly larger than a single district (Salt Lake). The other split was Utah County, which allowed for a compact urban/suburban Republican seat consisting of the leftovers of Salt Lake County and most of Utah County. I'd have to agree with you that a deviation of 328 would be sufficient to avoid any constitutional challenges considering that SCOTUS has permitted very small deviations when there is a strong rationale (such as avoiding county splits). In this case, the deviation is less than 0.04%.

I personally would agree with you as well. But unless the specific legislature has previously received the OK to go a tiny bit above 0 deviation, states don't want to. Basically, because the 5-county grouping just slightly doesn't work, its a problem. Mappers prefer to avoid microscopic-cuts when possible for the issue of representation seen in VA-07 and Albemarle. So the typical mapper then seeks to expand their cut, in this instance probably into Davis, in exchange for another community, in this instance probably Summit.

And thats just the simplest example of roads screwing with things.

[Oryxslayer]

I don't intend to restart discussion by bumping this, but rather just wish to note that the UT Supreme Court has been letting this cook for a unusually long time. So  unusual, that a number of people have suspected that it is intentional, and they are waiting for the Special Election to be over so as to not potentially influence things. In which case, we may see some resolution the next time the court sits after the holidays.