A few years ago, Utah voters made it crystal clear how they wanted the state’s political boundaries to be redrawn when they passed Proposition 4: We wanted a process that produced fair maps, gave all Utah voters a voice and wasn’t driven by politics or self-preservation.
If we hoped for a pony, what we got was a big pile of … well, it wasn’t a pony.
If you ask Better Boundaries, the group behind the ballot initiative that gave us an independent redistricting commission, there is plenty of fault to go around.
Specifically, Better Boundaries gave failing grades to 20 lawmakers in 39 districts where voters supported the ballot measure, only to have their elected representatives ignore the will of constituents and the work of the independent commission in favor of maps that were drawn in secret, split communities of interest and drew safe districts for themselves.
Notably, the failing grades weren’t reserved mostly for the Republicans who controlled the process, while six Democrats also got failing grades.
“Unfortunately — and we see this across the country — it’s really not a partisan issue,” said Better Boundaries executive director Katie Wright. “It has been something that Better Boundaries said from the beginning, is that lawmakers are conflicted when drawing boundaries. They have self-interest in the process.”
It’s a valid point. This was the third redistricting process I’ve covered and every time Democrats are basically packed into part of Salt Lake County and allowed to carve up that turf — and they go along with it. Republicans get the rest of the state and we end up with districts where incumbents get re-elected by margins usually not seen outside of North Korea.
But easy wins come at the expense of competing ideas and any accountability for either party and democracy suffers.
In his last five elections, House Minority Leader Brian King — one of the Democrats who got an “F” grade — has run unopposed for his Salt Lake City seat three times and won the two contested elections by an average of nearly 40 points.
But, whether you like the process Republicans put in place or not, he says, participating is not an option.
“I can say, ‘Mr. Speaker, I shall not be part of this tainted process, the people of the State of Utah have spoken and they want an independent redistricting committee and that, by damn, is what they should get,’” King said. “I don’t think I need to tell you that that would not have ended well for me personally, for Democrats in the Legislature and it would not have ended well for the redistricting process.”
“You can castigate me all you want. You can give me four ‘Fs’,” he said. “I have to live within the reality of the state constitutional language and the political reality of — not just being the minority leader — being the super-minority leader.”
King is also correct. Republicans made the decision to ignore voters and pass whatever districts they wanted and, in the process, make it almost impossible to hold them accountable because they’ve rigged the rules of the game.
Better Boundaries can brand as many of them as it wants with failing grades — give them four F’s or forty F’s — and the Republican majority still won’t listen to Utah voters.
So what can be done? One option is to go back to the basics.
You probably remember that after Proposition 4 passed, the Legislature rewrote the language, watering it down considerably.
On Thursday, Sen. Derek Kitchen, D-Salt Lake City, introduced a bill to replace the diluted version with the original language approved by voters, an attempt to give it back some of the teeth the Legislature pulled.
Wright said they negotiated — under the threat of full repeal — in good faith and hoped lawmakers would respect the process.
“When maps were released at 10:30 p.m. Friday by the Legislature’s redistricting commission and approved — against all public input — at 9 p.m. Monday night, we understood there was never an intent to honor that process,” she said. “The negotiation we entered into in good faith was never honored, so we need to go back to the language of Prop. 4.”
Coming so late in the session, and from a Democrat, however, Kitchen’s repeal-and-replace is likely dead on arrival.
So that leaves one option left: Suing the Legislature.
Better Boundaries has received a legal analysis of any potential case, and Wright said the group is taking its time to strategize over the legal team and arguments.
“If we do it, we want to win,” she said.
Once upon a time, a lawsuit seemed like a long shot, but in recent years more and more maps have been struck down. So far, gerrymandered maps in Alaska, Ohio and North Carolina have been thrown out and 30 more cases are pending across the country.
Could Utah courts — unlike its Legislature — actually side with voters? Maybe, maybe not. But the rigged congressional maps are ripe for a challenge and letting them go uncontested means a significant portion of the state will be without meaningful representation in Congress for at least the next 10 years. The courts are the only option to right that wrong.
