A Congress gridlocked, riven by partisan extremism. Citizens alienated from the process, reasonably fearful that their votes don’t matter.
There are many causes, and at least as many proposed solutions, for this sorry state of affairs. One big step that could make things at least a little better is starting to gain support in various pockets around the nation — including Utah.
Gerrymandering is a practice at least as old as our nation. It is the process used by politicians of all stripes to preserve and increase their own hold on power by designing the districts used to elect members of state legislatures and of the U.S. House of Representatives in such a way that their party is more likely to win elections.
Lawsuits against the practice are finding success. A federal court recently threw out the districts drawn by the North Carolina Legislature and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court just the other day did the same to the congressional districts in that state. The U.S. Supreme Court has already heard — but not ruled upon — a case from Wisconsin and has agreed to hear another from Maryland.
In Utah, organizers behind the Better Boundaries initiative are gathering signatures in hopes of placing on this year’s statewide ballot a measure that would set objective standards for drawing legislative and congressional districts and establish an independent commission to put those standards into practice.
The last time, the task was handled by the Utah Legislature. The process was transparent, involved numerous public hearings and online methods of giving input and trying out different configurations. And, in the end, the Legislature ignored all of that and designed congressional districts clearly intended to preserve Republican supremacy in all four constituencies.
The result is not just elections that are unfair. It is elections that don’t matter.
Just how badly those districts are gerrymandered is made clear by the policy wonks at the FiveThirtyEight website. They analyzed the congressional districts drawn in all 50 states, picked apart their flaws and created an interactive method of redesigning them base on criteria ranging from deliberate gerrymandering to algorithmic neutrality.
Particularly damning in the case of Utah is that clicking on the option “Show current district boundaries” and then the button “Gerrymander districts to favor Republicans’ shows that the two maps are identical.
The fair way to do it in this state — widely known here and confirmed by the FiveThirtyEight analysis — is to stop shattering the urban center of Utah, mostly Salt Lake County, among three districts and instead create a core district centering on Salt Lake City and its immediate surroundings.
Such a district would fit the description of properly designed one. It would be compact, keep together communities with a common interest and respect existing political boundaries such as cities. The result would be three, rather than the current four, districts almost sure to go Republican and one, rather than the existing none, that would be competitive enough that both parties would have a good shot.
More competitive districts, here and across the nation, would encourage candidates who run to the center, hoping to appeal across party lines and pick up votes from the great sensible middle, rather than skew far right or far left in fealty to partisan extremes.
Utah can take such an approach on its own, through the Better Boundaries initiative or something like it. Or we can sit back and wait until the U.S. Supreme Court makes us.
Either way, it needs to happen.