Utah Judge Dianna Gibson will hear two days of arguments starting Thursday morning over whether a new congressional map adopted by Republican legislators meets the standards of the voter-passed Better Boundaries initiative or if it is a partisan gerrymander and should be thrown out.
The outcome will determine whether voters will cast their ballots next year in four districts that favor GOP candidates or if there will be at least one district that could be won by a Democrat.
To get there, Gibson, a 3rd District Court judge, will have to wade through hundreds of pages of expert reports, competing computer algorithms, complicated statistical formulas, and hours of testimony in which experts for the plaintiffs are accusing the Legislature of adopting a Republican gerrymander, while the lawmakers’ experts allege the plaintiffs are trying to rig a district for Democrats.
A map needs to be in place by Nov. 10, according to Lt. Gov Deidre Henderson, whose office oversees state elections, in order for county clerks to be ready for candidates to file to run for the U.S. House seats starting Jan. 2.
A key point of contention will likely center on the assertion by the plaintiffs’ witness, Jowsei Chen, a political science professor at the University of Michigan, that the two experts hired by the state — commentator Sean Trende and Brigham Young University Professor Michael Barber — made serious errors in their analysis of the Legislature’s chosen map.
Each of the three experts used computer algorithms to create tens of thousands of maps, supposedly drawn without partisan data and designed to comply with the other redistricting criteria — avoiding splits of cities and counties, making districts contiguous and compact, and preserving communities of interest.
The idea is that if the Legislature’s map looks enough like 95% of the randomly drawn maps, it is reasonable to believe that it wasn’t drawn to intentionally benefit Republicans.
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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.