Utahns have submitted some 4,500 comments through Thursday evening on the six proposed maps to replace Utah’s four U.S. House of Representatives districts, with more rolling in ahead of the Legislature’s expected special session to formally adopt new boundaries.
Hundreds more comments have been made on scores of maps that have been submitted by the public, as lawmakers work to meet a court-ordered Oct. 6 deadline to redraw the boundaries.
Judge Dianna Gibson has set that target after invalidating the existing House boundaries, ruling that they could not be used in the 2026 election because the Legislature should have been required to comply with Proposition 4 — the 2018 Better Boundaries initiative — that sought to prohibit gerrymandering, among other things.
Public comments are being accepted through the weekend. The Legislative Redistricting Committee — made up predominantly of Republicans — is scheduled to meet Monday at 8 a.m. to recommend its preferred map.
On Tuesday, the Utah Republican Party urged its members to comment in favor of Option C — a map that combines eastern Salt Lake County with northeast Utah County, along with most of the east side of the rest of the state and the remainder of Salt Lake County with Tooele County.
That map is the least favorable map for Democrats, giving Republicans a 6-point advantage in the most competitive district, according to an analysis of past voting data by The Salt Lake Tribune.
The Utah Democratic Party chair then accused the GOP of “begging for the most rigged and the least competitive map,” and Republicans responded on social media that Democrats only have 14% of registered voters in the state but want half of the congressional seats.
The parties’ plea set off a flood of comments, with more than 900 rolling in during a 48-hour period, making Option C the most-commented-upon map.
In order to wade through the massive number of comments, The Tribune turned to Pinpoint — a Google tool for journalists that uses artificial intelligence — to summarize the hundreds of pages of input. The results of the AI tool were then manually checked against the commentary to validate the feedback.
The overwhelming majority of the comments were critical of the five maps proposed by Republican lawmakers on the Legislative Redistricting Committee, especially before the GOP’s call to action. A common refrain from commenters was that the committee’s maps were skewed to favor Republicans, that Salt Lake County should be kept intact and that lawmakers should use maps drawn in 2021 by the Independent Redistricting Commission created under Proposition 4.
Commenters were most favorable toward a map submitted by the two Democrats on the committee, an indication that more progressive Utahns are likely more engaged in a process that could yield a Democratic House member for the first time since 2021.
(Christopher Cherrington | The Salt Lake Tribune)
Here’s a brief summary of the input received on each map: