Gerrymandering has been a part of the political landscape in Utah and around the nation for more than a hundred years. It’s a practice that frequently happens when a political party is in power after a census year. Gerrymandered districts define voting districts so the party in power chooses their constituents rather than constituents choosing their legislators. The Better Boundaries citizen’s initiative asks voters to weigh in on the issue of allowing Utah legislators to continue to draw their own boundaries. Carolyn Murray has this:
Derek Monson is with the Sutherland Institute, a conservative Salt Lake City based think tank. He said his organization is not necessarily opposed to the Better Boundaries initiative but is more concerned about the unprecedented number of lawsuits he thinks will result regardless of it passing.
“It’s not going to solve the issue of legislators picking their voters because by the constitutional mandate, they’re still going to be in charge and by the initiative, they’re still going to be appointing the majority of the commission. So, they’re still the ones making all the decisions and so, I guess it becomes a question of are we really solving the problem we are supposed to be solving. And then, secondarily, with the rules that get put in place, it’s likely to lead to, in our analysis, to a lot of lawsuits. And, that will probably be the primary outcome. Things just end up going to court rather than resolving the issue of, say gerrymandering or legislators picking their voters.”
Jeff Wright is with the organization Better Boundaries which is a proponent of the ballot initiative. He said manipulating boundaries after census years has been around since 1812.
“What has changed is the extreme gerrymandering that hs taken place across this country. Big data, sophisticated modeling have fundamentally changed the nature of gerrymandering. And, it really subverts the will of the people. It is not a transparent process. It is not an accountable process. And, we think this needs to change here in Utah. We are not about an outcome. We’re not about a partisan outcome. We’re about a better structural process.”
Monson said Utah has not had many ballot initiatives until Utah’s SB 54, also known as the count my vote bill, passed in 2014. It allows citizens to get popular issues on the ballot through signature gathering. Monson said the ballot language is loose and subject to litigation if it passes will be weighed down in litigation.
“There’s a metric in there that we’re supposed to look at. We’re supposed to look at partisan symmetry. But there’s also a requirement that you can’t unduly favor or disfavor a particular party. And, we are in a state where registered republicans out number registered Democrats by four to one. You know, what is that really even going to mean. How do you maintain partisan symmetry and not unduly favor or disfavor a party with those kind of numbers. And, it gets kind of ambiguous and whatever side doesn’t like it can sue under the ballot initiative.”
Wright said all voters are not currently considered under the Utah redistricting process. An independent commission will propose a voter map and the legislature will have the final say.
“Well, we are a multi partisan organization, so we are made up of democrats, republicans and unaffiliated voters. Unaffiliated voters are the second biggest group in Utah that we need to take into account. You know, we wanted to make this constitutional. The Utah Constitution allows the legislature or gives the legislature the final authority on the drawing of maps and we wanted to stay within the constitutional parameters within the Utah system.”
Monson said he does not think the Better Boundaries initiative will make any difference for voters. He said communities will always have to be broken up to accommodate population distributions.
"Yeah, you know, I think it’s always going to be a problem when their city gets divvied up into multiple districts. But, I don’t think that’s going to stop under Better Boundaries or any proposal that I’ve seen. I think that’s a reasonable thing to want to kind of have your community, your city, your county be one contiguous whole. It becomes then, well whose communities get broken up?”
Wright disagrees and said the standards in the initiative will increase the potential to draw better, more representative voting maps.
“Unambiguous…that’s what we have right now. Right now, we have incumbents drawing their own lines right now and there are no rules. So, I think with the standards that we put in place, which are very common sense, not using incumbent data, you know, trying to keep cities and towns together as best you can. I think those standards increase the potential to have better boundaries drawn. Again, we’renot about an outcome here. We don’t have a view of what the map should look like. That’s what the citizens of Utah are going to do going forward with this citizen commission.”
The Project for Deeper Understanding will host a Better Boundaries Panel discussion on Tuesday October 23rd from 7 to 9 pm at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in the Snyderville Basin. KPCW will stream the event live.
