Live courtroom updates: The ‘Utah paradox’ complicates political redistricting, scholar testifies

4:05 p.m. update

Political favoritism

Scholar Chris Warshaw, an expert for the plaintiffs challenging Utah’s congressional maps, concluded his testimony Thursday saying that the tests he applied “suggest the [Legislature’s] enacted map unduly favors the Republican Party and the other proposed maps from the plaintiffs are politically neutral and do not favor either party.”

Warshaw, a Georgetown University political science professor, was followed by Kassra Oskooii, a political science professor from the University of Delaware, who told 3rd District Judge Dianna Gibson that he was asked by the plaintiffs to make improvements to two maps — one drawn by the plaintiffs, the other the Legislature’s chosen map.

Oskooii said that he was able to remove a split in North Salt Lake and also, by moving Bluffdale into District 3, he was able to keep Millcreek whole in District 2.

Tyler Green, an attorney for the Legislature, pointed out to series of other changes, like moving San Juan County into a district with Kane County, even though it takes five hours to drive from Kanab to Blanding.

Green also pressed Oskooii on whether he considered keeping school districts or county council districts together. Oskooii later said that preserving those communities of interest, while part of the redistricting criteria, are not as important as having equal populations and making the districts compact and contiguous.

The judge also heard from Malcolm and Victoria Reid, Millcreek residents who are among the individual plaintiffs in the lawsuit. The couple spoke about why they supported the 2018 Better Boundaries initiative.

“I would like to feel we can have our voice heard consistently,” Malcolm Reid said, “not only at the local level, at the federal level.”

Reid said that, while he is still a citizen and can still vote, he feels his vote is less effective when the people in charge have “carved up” his city.

While the previous congressional boundaries split Millcreek into four districts, the map recently adopted by the Legislature puts Millcreek into two districts.

1:50 p.m. update

Putting the tests to the test

After lunch, a second expert witness for the plaintiffs challenging Utah’s congressional maps — Georgetown University political science professor Chris Warshaw — explained why the tests the Legislature chose to detect partisan gerrymandering are a poor fit for a state like Utah.

Warshaw said the academics who created the partisan bias test that the Legislature chose to put into law warned that it should not be used in states — like Utah — that generally don’t have competitive elections.

When the test is applied to Utah, maps that favor Democrats actually produce scores that would indicate the map is a pro-Republican gerrymander and fail the test, while maps with four Republican seats pass the test, he said. Academics have actually referred to that phenomenon as the “Utah paradox.”

The second test, the mean-median test, is “among the worst measures” for a state like Utah.

That’s because in a GOP-dominated state, Democrats could realistically only win one seat, he said. But the mean-median test looks at the partisan tilt of the second- and third-most-Republican seats.

Before Warshaw took the stand, the plaintiffs’ first expert, Jowei Chen, a University of Michigan political science professor, on cross-examination by the Legislature’s attorneys, defended the algorithm he used to assess the three proposed maps — one from the Legislature, two offered by the plaintiffs.

The Legislature’s counsel, Soren Geiger, pressed Chen over why so many of his maps looked alike, creating a Democrat-leaning district in the northern part of Salt Lake County.

Chen said that was a natural way to divide the county — which has to be split because the county has more people than can be in a single congressional district.

Geiger challenged Chen’s earlier statement that three counties need to be divided, suggesting maps could have been drawn splitting just one or two counties, and an east-west split of Salt Lake County would also be an option.

Chen acknowledged an east-west split is possible but said he believes some of his maps did that.

Geiger also referenced an academic article that asserted Chen had made “cosmetic” changes to maps his algorithm generated in a redistricting case in New Mexico in order to ensure there weren’t duplicates among the 10,000 maps he created.

Chen said that accusation is “a complete lie” and that it would be absurd for him to manually manipulate his map ensemble.

He concluded by stating that the maps his algorithm generated were the only set that complied with the redistricting criteria in Proposition 4.

11:20 a.m. update

Plaintiffs’ scholar answers critic

Professor Jowei Chen concluded his direct testimony Thursday by stating that, based on 10,000 maps his algorithm generated, more than 99% of those maps would create at least one Democratic-leaning districts.

That, in itself, shows that the map the Legislature adopted is unusual, Chen added, in that it would create four safe Republican districts.

According to the report Chen submitted to 3rd District Court, just six of the thousands of maps his algorithm devised would have yielded a 4-0 Republican advantage.

Chen also responded to criticism from one of the Legislature’s experts, Brigham Young University political science professor Michael Barber, who had said that Chen used an unknown algorithm that he had created — comparing the opaqueness to a “black box.”

Chen said he provided his code to the Legislature’s experts, has published academic work on it, testified in court based on his algorithm and had his testimony accepted by a court.

Chen also criticized the 50,000 maps Barber generated, noting that in the BYU scholar’s coding, he told the computer to not consider Salt Lake County to be treated as a county. That meant 28 other counties were kept intact, but Salt Lake County was split repeatedly.

Splitting Salt Lake County yielded Republican-leaning maps that were then used as a comparison for the map adopted by the Legislature.

Chen also responded to a criticism from Barber that many of Chen’s districts were similar in that they created a district in the northern part of Salt Lake County.

Chen countered that more than 83% of the 50,000 maps Barber created were duplicates. Chen also said that applying the redistricting criteria in Proposition 4 naturally creates a district in northern Salt Lake County.

That’s because Bluffdale and Draper straddle the line between Salt Lake and Utah counties in the south and the Great Salt Lake creates a natural barrier in the north, Chen said. To keep Bluffdale and Draper together and create a district constrained by the lake, he said, means many of the maps generated will have a district in the northern part of Salt Lake County.

10:30 a.m. update

Expert: Legislature’s map is ‘extreme partisan outlier’

The expert witness for plaintiffs challenging Utah’s congressional boundaries criticized a new map proposed by the Legislature, calling it an “extreme partisan outlier” favoring Republicans.

Chen said the map adopted by the Republican-dominated Legislature “cracked” Democratic voters to create four safe GOP districts.

Judge Dianna Gibson is hearing two days of testimony in 3rd District Court from expert witnesses before deciding if a map adopted by the Legislature complies with the standards in Proposition 4, the Better Boundaries initiative approved by voters in 2018.

A new map needs to be in place by Nov. 10 so county clerks can make preparations for the 2026 congressional midterms.

Chen criticized the “partisan bias” test that GOP lawmakers adopted to determine if proposed maps are partisan gerrymanders, saying it doesn’t work in a state like Utah that has a large Republican majority.

When the partisan bias test it is applied to Utah maps, Chen said, districts that are competitive or lean toward Democrats almost always fail, while those that favor Republicans almost always pass.

Chen also pointed to what he said are flaws in 100,000 maps the Legislature’s expert, Sean Trende, created to compare the lawmakers’ map against. Chen said the redistricting criteria in state law dictates that counties should not be split.

Practically, Chen said, there is no need to split more than three counties — and Chen created 10,000 maps with only three county splits. More than half of Trende’s maps had at least seven splits and some many more.

The more time counties are split, Chen said, the more likely the map is to create four Republican seats — since putting random voters in random districts makes it more likely the districts will reflect the overall statewide GOP advantage.

Chen argues that maps that don’t comply with the redistricting standards in law should not be used as a baseline to compare the legislative map against.

He makes a similar point about compactness — another redistricting standard in law — and points out that Trende’s maps are not compact and, as with county splits, the less compact districts are the more likely they are to favor Republicans.