Utah 2020 Redistricting

[Tintrlvr]

Shameless bump -

Here's a normal map one could expect out of a fair commission



https://davesredistricting.org/join/904d1950-7c92-48cb-bc19-7f748ff5eff1

Just to note - the four counties north and northwest of SLC almost perfectly form a district and considering the arrangement of the Salt Lake Desert in the west and mountains in the east they also form a near perfect COI too.

This map has 1 municipality split.

One problem with this map, there's no road connection between Rich and Morgan or Summit counties. Have to either put it with the 1st or have the 2nd take a bit of Weber.

Having to go a few miles over the border into Wyoming to connect between Rich and Summit counties is not a real issue, especially for a county as small and isolated as Rich County. Road connections are a useful proxy sometimes for whether certain county connections make sense but also have to be subject to general scrutiny in context.

[Tintrlvr]

Okay I think I figured out how to make 2 Biden seats.
https://davesredistricting.org/join/e1ba5099-629c-45ae-99a7-687d1235b19a

You could make it a bit easier on yourself by putting Park City into one of the Biden districts.

[Tintrlvr]

Okay I think I figured out how to make 2 Biden seats.
https://davesredistricting.org/join/e1ba5099-629c-45ae-99a7-687d1235b19a

You could make it a bit easier on yourself by putting Park City into one of the Biden districts.

Ah, that's true. That was not optimized, merely it was a proof of concept. But I also wanted to avoid having no road connectivity whatsoever. As far as I'm aware, Box Elder and Tooele have no road link of any kind. Avoiding Summit going into one of the Biden seats makes this a non-issue.

Just split Summit. Eastern Summit is quite Republican anyway.

https://davesredistricting.org/join/94f4593c-99d4-45d5-bff0-e4c87a7b9af0

[Tintrlvr]

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.

It's unfortunate that they didn't take any essentially normal maps. I don't quite understand why the first map combined Tooele with the northern counties; it doesn't seem to be motivated by any other decisions on the map.

That said, all three do create a safe D district rather than cracking SLC, and none is a real gerrymander, so it's hard to be too unhappy. The second option might even have a second competitive seat by the end of the decade, though hard to be certain just based on this image.

[Tintrlvr]

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

[Tintrlvr]

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.

[Tintrlvr]

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.

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.)