We all have to choose our standards.
We choose our standards at work — what do we expect from our daily employment output? We choose our standards in romantic life — what are willing to accept in a partner? And we choose our standards in our interactions with the world — what principles and values will we live up to?
And it’s standards that are at the center of the redistricting case that was argued in front of the Utah Supreme Court this past week. In case you’re somehow unaware, the case brought to the court by the League of Women Voters, Mormon Women for Ethical Government and other Utah residents challenges the fairness and authority of the maps the state Legislature decided to use for elections during this decade. Those maps split Salt Lake County into four separate districts, resulting in certain wins for Republican Congressional candidates statewide, and virtually guarantee one-party rule federally and at the state Legislature for the next decade.
The big question is: what standards do we choose for our district maps? Let’s dig in to the different standards we can choose for redistricting maps — how they apply to Utah’s map, as well as the court case being decided now.
Princeton Gerrymandering Project standards
The Princeton Gerrymandering Project’s mission statement is simple: “We bridge the gap between mathematics and the law to achieve fair representation through redistricting reform.” In short, they look at a whole bunch of different metrics in order to try to decide which maps are fair and which ones aren’t. Those are:
• Good maps should be compact: i.e., not salamander-shaped. The Reock score and Polsby-Popper score basically measure how close the districts are in shape to a circle.
• Good maps should be fair from a partisan perspective. To do this, Princeton calculates a few different stats: “partisan bias”, which looks at the number of seats a party would have under a map in a 50/50 election; “packed wins”, which looks at the difference in the average win percentage a party would have across the districts; and “mean-median difference”, which looks at the difference in the average vote share and its median vote share across all four districts.
• Good maps should avoid racism. In short, don’t be like Alabama, who put nearly all of its Black-majority precincts into one district to minimize their voting power; the Supreme Court voted those maps down in June. To measure this, Princeton compares Black, Hispanic, and other minority populations in each district — if there are big differences, that might be bad.
So how did Utah’s map do by these standards? You’ll be surprised: the map passed by the Legislature received an A from Princeton.
Utah's congressional map, as passed by the state Legislature.
The map may be tilted, but it satisfies the Princeton standards above pretty well. The shapes of the districts aren’t too wild or crazy. If there were a 50/50 vote split in Utah (fat chance), the Democrats would get either 1 or 2 seats. And the four districts all have pretty similar percentages of minority residents, between 19% and 27%.
It’s a classic case of overfitting to maximize statistics rather than actual quality. For example, in the NBA’s past, some players were given contract bonuses for scoring a certain number of points per game: if you score 20 points per game, get a million more dollars! But then some players realized that just shooting a whole bunch of bad shots would eventually get you to 20 points per game (getting you the bonus!), even though it would also hurt your team. This map is the bad volume shooter of maps.
Princeton eventually repealed the Utah Legislature map’s A grade, instead releasing a five-page statement on why the map wasn’t actually good. And while such a move might (OK, it does) just look like retroactive Ivy League Democratic favoritism, their arguments make sense.
Proposition 4′s standards
Why didn’t the map live up to snuff? Well, it didn’t satisfy the other standards for good redistricting maps that Princeton didn’t or couldn’t measure in their statistics.
The Better Boundaries-sponsored Proposition 4 ballot measure passed by Utahns in 2018 lays out the following standards that Utah’s maps should abide by, in order:
1. adhering to federal law and achieving equal population between districts;
2. minimizing divisions of municipalities and counties across multiple districts;
3. making districts geographically compact;
4. making districts that are contiguous and allow for ease of transport throughout the district;
5. preserving traditional neighborhoods and local communities of interest;
6. following natural and geographic boundaries, barriers and features; and
7. maximizing the agreement of boundaries between different types of districts.
The Utah Legislature’s map does 1, 3, 4, and 7 pretty well. But by splitting Salt Lake County into four districts, it fails test No. 2 dramatically. It fails test No. 5, too, splitting neighborhoods and communities of interest: downtown is divided, as are Millcreek, Midvale and Sandy. And it fails No. 6; lines are frequently drawn where no natural or geographic barrier or feature exists.
It also fails another Proposition 4 test: partisan favoritism. Proposition 4 said that the Legislature may not divide districts in a manner that “purposefully or unduly favors” a political party or candidate. This map, even the state’s Congress members acknowledge, favors the Republican party.
The court’s standards
But here’s the big question: does any of that matter? The map is already law, and has already been used in one election. The only way something changes between now and 2030 is if the judicial system — and in particular, the Utah Supreme Court — decides otherwise.
Because the justices care about following the law, they’re not asking what standards we should have for our maps. They are asking a narrower question: on what “judicially manageable” standards can the court decide whether or not the maps are legal? And then, by those standards... are they?
It’s actually a fascinating debate. The five justices on the Utah Supreme Court and the Legislature’s attorney Taylor Meehan went back and forth, with the justices frequently cutting Meehan off in order to ask specific questions on what the Legislature could do. You can watch the whole thing on YouTube, if you want. It’s way more interesting than I would have expected a Utah Supreme Court hearing to be.
The Legislature’s argument is this: there’s no judicially manageable standard for these maps to be called illegal. The Utah Constitution says that the Legislature gets to pass, amend, or repeal laws; it also says that the Legislature gets to draw the district lines every 10 years. So yeah, duh, lawmakers can repeal Proposition 4, remove its higher standards and then make a new map however they want. If the people don’t like it, they can replace their legislators.
But the Utah Supreme Court justices fought back on that pretty hard. They cited Section 2 of the state’s constitution: “All political power is inherent in the people; and all free governments are founded on their authority for their equal protection and benefit, and they have the right to alter or reform their government as the public welfare may require.” The Legislature rejecting a ballot measure altering and reforming their government may have overstepped their powers.
And if they did, there are clear standards for the map — those passed in Proposition 4. Justice John Pearce asked Meehan with the first question of the whole debate: “We know the exact standards that a majority of Utahns wanted to apply to these very maps. Why aren’t those standards that we can apply?”
Now, look — the justices’ hard questions to the Legislature’s lawyer don’t necessarily reflect their thinking on the subject; it could be that they’re just teasing out the argument here. But they certainly didn’t buy the Legislature’s argument out of hand, and it is a good sign that they’re trying to find a judicial way to consider the will of the people here.
After all, the people have standards. We just want the Legislature to follow them.
Andy Larsen is a data columnist for The Salt Lake Tribune. You can reach him at alarsen@sltrib.com.
Editor’s note • This story is available to Salt Lake Tribune subscribers only. Thank you for supporting local journalism.
