Somehow, we just couldn't work up the proper depth of editorial dudgeon about that. That's because Utah's method for apportioning seats in Congress is just as debauched as the Democrats in Washington say it is.

The possibility of another House seat - and the added Electoral College vote that goes with it - has been resurrected, though sadly not due to any improvement in the reapportionment methods used in Utah.

The idea, again, is to finally give the citizens of the District of Columbia a real voting member in the House and allow Utah the added seat it would have received if the Census had counted us - and our LDS missionaries abroad - correctly in the year 2000.

The bill had been thought to have a chance because it would be of equal benefit to both parties - a new Democrat elected from deep-blue D.C. and a balancing Republican chosen from ultra-red Utah.

But the deal died because Democrats worried that if the Utah Legislature redrew the state's congressional districts from three to four, the lopsidedly Republican lawmakers would seize the opportunity to gerrymander the state's only Democratic member of Congress - the 2nd District's Jim Matheson - out of a job.

That would mean one added Democrat and two more Republicans. And, with the very narrow division in the House, that's a prospect the Democrats couldn't stomach.

Now, Rep. Thomas Davis, R-Va., has reintroduced the bill, this time requiring that the fourth Utah House seat be elected at-large, at least until the post 2010-Census reapportionment. That at-large seat would almost certainly go to a Republican, but would preserve Matheson's competitive district as is.

Of course, if Utah had already joined the small but growing number of states that use a bipartisan commission to apportion its congressional and legislative seats in logical ways, producing some competitive districts, then Utah could have been trusted with that fourth seat last year, and we might be voting to fill it this year.

That's the price of not being trustworthy.