Republican legislators could make it easier for them to implement new congressional maps that retain four safe Republican districts, based on a draft of a bill unveiled Sunday. Utah’s Legislative Redistricting Committee met Monday in its first public hearing to discuss five newly drawn congressional maps and the proposed legislation.
Lawmakers are currently redrawing congressional maps, as directed by the courts. Under the judge’s order, lawmakers have to draw the new maps to comply with requirements in 2018’s Better Boundaries initiative, also known as Proposition 4.
That initiative prohibits the commission from drawing districts “that purposefully or unduly favors or disfavors any incumbent elected official, candidate or prospective candidate for elective office, or any political party.” The law currently lets a judge use “the best available data and scientific and statistical methods” to determine if the boundaries meet that standard.
But new legislation from Sen. Brady Brammer, R-Pleasant Grove, would create a formula for determining “partisan symmetry” by looking at the margins of victory for Republicans in the three previous elections for statewide offices — president, governor, attorney general, auditor and treasurer — and deem the maps to not be biased as long as the advantage for Republicans isn’t greater than the margin of GOP victories in those races.
Republicans won those races by an average margin of about 30 percentage points. That means that, theoretically, Republican lawmakers could adopt four districts that each give GOP candidates an advantage of up to 30 percentage points while still passing the partisan symmetry test.
The proposed bill would also make Brammer’s partisan symmetry test the only method that could be used to determine if the maps are fair — a point that frustrated Democrats on the redistricting committee.
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This article is published through the Utah News Collaborative, a partnership of news organizations in Utah that aims to inform readers across the state.