Utah 2020 Redistricting

[Stuart98]

Box Elder should never be in the same district as Tooele, there's no real connection between the two. It should always be in the same district as either Weber or Cache, if not both.

Salt Lake County is basically split in two ways. The east side tends to be whiter, wealthier, and more Democratic than the poorer, less white, and more Republican west side. There's a similar trend from north to south, with the south end (particularly on the west side) being whiter, wealthier, and more Republican than the north side. The cities on the south-west end of the county (South Jordan, Riverton, Bluffdale, and Herriman) are much like the cities on the north end of Utah county (Lehi and Saratoga springs) and can go together. Looking at kwabbit's map, I'd move West Jordan and Copperton over to CD2 and move Cottenwood Heights and Midvale over to CD3. Precincts on the eastern edge of SLCO are mostly ski resorts and should go together. Summit county is also mostly a resort area and forms a COI with the eastern edges of Salt Lake County, though the northern areas around the county seat of Coalville are more like Morgan county. Wasatch county is an odd mix between resort areas and very conservative Utah county exurbs. Since it's not possible to split it due to the precinct shapes, sticking it with Utah county is preferred though pairing it with Summit is acceptable.

Southern Utah doesn't exactly form a COI, since the south-east end consists of the heavily Native American San Juan county and the relatively liberal destination area of Grand County, which only have two road connections with the rest of the state: the minor road of State Route 95 through northern San Juan, and I-70 running through Green River. Pairing those two with Emery is a necessity but beyond that it doesn't particularly matter if the district they're in is more based on counties to the west or counties to the north, though the former definitely has a better aesthetic.

This map probably won't upset anyone other than Chris Stewart (or possibly Blake Moore):



Link

While where representatives live shouldn't be a concern in a fair map, it probably will be a concern in whatever map the legislature draws, although Utah doesn't require representatives live in their districts (and pretty soon half our delegation won't). For reference:

Blake Moore (UT-01) currently lives in UT-02 (in the East Bend of SLC, south of the University of Utah). He promised he'd move into the 1st district, though I don't think he has yet.

Chris Stewart (UT-02) currently lives in UT-02 (in Farmington, central Davis County). This map would put him in UT-01. (Technically, this means my map doesn't double-stack anyone)

John Curtis (UT-03) currently lives in UT-03 (in Provo). This map would put him in UT-03.

Burgess Owens (UT-04) currently lives in UT-03 (in Draper, south-east SLCO). I'm not sure if he's planning on moving but I'm guessing not, given as how until a couple years ago he actually lived in the 4th district (in Herriman). This map would put him in UT-04.

[Stuart98]

Yeah, Utah's one state where geography gets worse for Democrats with smaller district sizes.

[Stuart98]

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.

[Stuart98]

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.

Not sure what you mean here, there's roads going from Wasatch to Summit to Morgan to Rich (the road going from Summit to Morgan is a major highway...).



Rich county is isolated from everything really, so nothing for that county will be perfect.

You misread, I was saying that neither Summit nor Morgan have a road connection to Rich.

[Stuart98]

[Stuart98]

The Green Team just maintained the current gerrymander more or less.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNcBu8SLAZ8

The green team included former representative Rob Bishop, so it shouldn't be cause for surprise.

Though trying to do a least change that way actually would make Chris Stewart upset since he lives in Farmington and he's one of our reps who currently actually lives in his district.

As for the others, the thing about setting people who haven't used mapping software before loose is that they come up with Galaxy brain district ideas.

[Stuart98]

Tried making a map, and it feels like the obvious option is just having three seats in the vicinity of Salt Lake City and the fourth seat for the rest of Utah.

Not how communities of interest work. Logan and Brigham City have little connection to Vernal or Richfield or Cedar City or St. George or Tooele, but considerable ties to Ogden.

[Stuart98]

The Green Team just maintained the current gerrymander more or less.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNcBu8SLAZ8

The green team included former representative Rob Bishop, so it shouldn't be cause for surprise.

Though trying to do a least change that way actually would make Chris Stewart upset since he lives in Farmington and he's one of our reps who currently actually lives in his district.

As for the others, the thing about setting people who haven't used mapping software before loose is that they come up with Galaxy brain district ideas.

Honestly if this map doesn't change, I wouldn't be too surprised if Republicans just use it to avoid overriding the commission.

The commission drew 11 congressional maps and they'll submit no more (and no less) than three to the legislature. If they decide to adopt a map me or another user submits, that takes from those 3. It's possible this map makes it through just on account of being least changey but I wouldn't bet on it, especially since it's utter trash by all of the commission criteria except for preserving cores of prior districts.

[Stuart98]

The Independent Commission's draft maps are available on their website. Direct links:

• Congress
• State Senate
• State House
• State Board of Education

They're... kinda all weird/bad?

The state legislative redistricting committee won't publish any draft maps until they've concluded their public hearings, which begin this week.

As of yesterday, both the commission and the legislative committee have started accepting maps from the public. Links to submit maps are found here for the Independent Commission, and here for the legislative committee. If you export your DRA maps as block assignment CSVs, you should be able to import them into the ESRI redistricting software that both groups are using.

[Stuart98]

The Independent Commission's draft maps are available on their website. Direct links:

• Congress
• State Senate
• State House
• State Board of Education

They're... kinda all weird/bad?

The state legislative redistricting committee won't publish any draft maps until they've concluded their public hearings, which begin this week.

As of yesterday, both the commission and the legislative committee have started accepting maps from the public. Links to submit maps are found here for the Independent Commission, and here for the legislative committee. If you export your DRA maps as block assignment CSVs, you should be able to import them into the ESRI redistricting software that both groups are using.

Got my plan submitted. Is there any way to view submissions to the commission on their website?

If you share your plan (which is from a different tab than the submit button) then others can view it within the ESRI software. Beyond that I'm not seeing anything.

[Stuart98]

Those would all be deep red…

So much for “independent commission” fighting gerrymandering

The congressional one is just a simple least change map.

Both of you seem to have missed the bar along the top that allows you to switch between different draft maps; there's something like ten different ones for Congress, only one of which can be construed as a least change map. The commission divided into three groups a couple weeks ago which are drawing different maps. The map shown by default is the one that Rob Bishop's team drew and was discussed earlier in this thread; I doubt there's any significance to it being the default map visible. The draft maps will be revised based on feedback from hearings across the state (which started yesterday) and then narrowed down to three in November.

[Stuart98]

The Independent Commission's draft maps are available on their website. Direct links:

• Congress
• State Senate
• State House
• State Board of Education

These links have been updated with all the legal map proposals from the public.

Public comments are finally visible too.

[Stuart98]

I haven't followed this topic and didn't look through the other maps since I wanted to draw one from scratch. If I was going to draw a fair map, this is what I would draw:



I think it pretty much speaks for itself. Only two counties are split: Salt Lake (which is necessary) and Utah. What I found out and really like is that this naturally creates a nice northern district. The five counties in this UT-01 only deviate by 328 above ideal (which is the largest deviation in this map). I also think a compact SLC district within Salt Lake County makes by far the most sense. I also felt combining the remainder of Salt Lake County with most of Utah County (including Provo and Orem) for a compact urban/suburban seat made the most sense. UT-04 is not perfect from a COI standpoint, but there's always going to be a problem on a 4-district map and I felt this is the least problematic on that aspect.


I was looking over the draft maps on the Utah commission site. It's amazing how awful most of them are. The one I like the most (in part because it's most similar to what I drew) is Public Submission: TD (2). The one problem is that it doesn't put Box Elder in the northern district.

Morgan County goes in the Northern District, a majority of the workers in it commute to Ogden for work. Splitting North Salt Lake from the rest of Davis is a lesser evil imo.

[Stuart98]

Been in the room watching the independent commission narrow down their 12 maps to refine before sending them to the legislature.

VOD link

School board, house, and senate maps went through smoothly, but Bishop and Durham have been having explosive arguments over how congressional maps should look. Divide is between sending in a map with all urban-rural mix districts and sending in only maps containing one or two completely urban districts. Bishop is insisting that his green map that nobody else supports should be one of the maps. Threatened to resign his position at one point. Chair Facer is now adjourning the meeting in the hopes that they'll resolve the impasse tomorrow as I'm typing this.

I submitted a compromise map to the commission that resolves Bishop's concern of every district being urban-rural split and Durham's concern that Salt Lake County should only be split once. Splits St. George though, and Bishop may reject the new map out of hand specifically because it only splits Salt Lake County once (even though one of the districts would be completely solidly Republican).

[Stuart98]

The Independent Commission's final public hearing in West Valley City is ongoing.

Once the public comment portion is over the commission will be meeting to whittle down their congressional maps to three and conduct other commission business. I'm in the room and will be staying for the duration.

[Stuart98]

Meeting is adjourned without discussing the particulars on any congressional maps. Commission is choosing to delay further discussion on congressional maps (and other matters) until Monday, so that numbers can be run on new map submissions.

Monday's meeting won't have in person public attendees I don't think (or a public comment period) but will have a livestream.

[Stuart98]

The meeting is now live.

The commission will be selecting their congressional maps, finalizing the other maps they previously selected, and performing a partisan evaluation of their maps to make sure none of them unduly favor or disfavor a particular party.

[Stuart98]

Rob Bishop has resigned from the commission. This late in the process, is he going to have to be replaced?

Reason for resignation is frustration with the commission drifting away from his approach to having gerrymandered urban-rural mix districts.

[Stuart98]

Rob Bishop has resigned from the commission. This late in the process, is he going to have to be replaced?

Reason for resignation is frustration with the commission drifting away from his approach to having gerrymandered urban-rural mix districts.

Bishop wants a bunch of rurban seats? odd

Rurban districts is how you gerrymander Utah in favor of the Republicans.

(Note: This is just at the congressional level, none of the commissioners were advocating for rurban school board or state legislative districts)

[Stuart98]

Rob Bishop has resigned from the commission. This late in the process, is he going to have to be replaced?

Reason for resignation is frustration with the commission drifting away from his approach to having gerrymandered urban-rural mix districts.

Bishop wants a bunch of rurban seats? odd

Rurban districts is how you gerrymander Utah in favor of the Republicans.

(Note: This is just at the congressional level, none of the commissioners were advocating for rurban school board or state legislative districts)

On the other hand, a "big rural" district (aka everything but BE, WB, CA, RI, DA counties in the north; a Salt Lake CD; and one CD taking in the rest of Salt Lake County and all of Utah County as needed) is generally favorable to Dems in terms of results. If Utah ever shifts enough towards Dems, such a plan might even give Ds a tie in seats while losing by high single digits statewide.

You can actually have a compact two Biden district map right now, though it's no guarantee either district would vote dem down-ballot.

[Stuart98]

Brad Wilson is not going to replace Bishop, so it's a six member commission from now on. Hoping the legislature doesn't use this as an excuse to throw out their maps (though that may have been the point).

[Stuart98]

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

[Stuart98]

I'm in an absolutely packed meeting where the independent commission is presenting its maps to the legislative committee. Will post a video (or audio) on demand link once the meeting is over and the vod is up.

[Stuart98]

Here's the audio on demand link.

[Stuart98]

DRA links to them all.

State House
State Senate
State Board of Education
Congressional

Congressional is about as disgusting as a plan as they could possibly have done. Efficiency gap with 2020 president numbers for it is 27.94; I've never seen DRA spit out a number that high. Bluest district is Trump +16.