WASHINGTON — Rep. Blake Moore, R-Utah, has long believed in redistricting reform. He wrote about the concept while in graduate school, and he was inspired by Ronald Reagan’s support to establish commissions to draw states’ congressional boundaries.
It was those beliefs that inspired Moore to get involved with Better Boundaries in 2017, before he was elected to Congress, to create an independent redistricting commission in Utah to prevent gerrymandering. Moore was one of the original signatories on the application to put Proposition 4 on the ballot, which would later be passed as an anti-gerrymandering law.
This law became the legal basis for a judge’s recent decision to throw out Utah’s congressional map and redraw the lines before next year’s midterm elections.
But, Moore said, what started as a bipartisan push to ensure fair maps has now strayed from its original mission. And he said it has led to reverse gerrymandering in a deep red state.
“It was very much about a process, about a redistricting process in Utah. It was always an advisory commission, an advisory aspect of that work, that respected the Legislature’s constitutional role to redistrict,” Moore told the Deseret News in an interview.
How Blake Moore got involved with changing Utah’s gerrymandering laws
Moore was one of the original Republican co-chairs of Better Boundaries, a group that formed in 2017 with the goal of passing a citizen-led initiative that later became known as Proposition 4.
When Moore joined the group, he wasn’t necessarily interested in getting involved in politics, he said. Instead, he just wanted to do something related to public policy, which is what he studied in graduate school at Northwestern University.
The group wanted to create an independent redistricting commission to propose congressional boundaries that followed certain criteria to prevent gerrymandering. That initiative narrowly passed on the 2018 ballot, and it was later amended by the Utah Legislature to specify the commission’s role as entirely advisory — meaning state lawmakers could reject their suggestions and enact their own.
That’s exactly what state Republicans did in 2020 before implementing their own congressional map with four safe Republican seats. Moore supported those efforts at the time, emphasizing to the Deseret News on Tuesday he had always believed the commission should not be used to replace the Legislature’s constitutional authority over congressional boundaries.
“The whole effort was advisory,” Moore said. “It wasn’t a constitutional change.”
That 2020 reversal of the ballot initiative, followed by the 2021 map changes, is what spurred the lawsuit by Better Boundaries and other nonprofit groups, accusing the Legislature of violating Proposition 4. And now, three years after the lawsuit was filed, Utah is on the verge of implementing a new map that could guarantee a Democratic win in Salt Lake City.
Securing that blue district appears to be what became the group’s main focus, Moore said, which he considers a violation of what its original intent was meant to be.
“I think just basically from the communication that I’ve seen, it seems to be very much focused on getting a blue district, which also, in itself, is also gerrymandering,” Moore said. “It’s unfortunate that it’s gotten to that point.”
Better Boundaries has morphed past anti-gerrymandering efforts, Moore says
Despite its original intent to ensure fair elections for every vote, regardless of party, Moore lamented that the group had changed its goals in recent years — claiming it has become more about securing Democratic wins.
“The Better Boundaries that’s been in the press a lot lately,” Moore said. “I feel like they’re more focused on outcomes and almost ensuring that there’s a Democratic seat.”
Moore pointed to the fact that the lawsuit only challenged the boundaries for U.S. House seats and not the lines used for state Legislature districts — which he says proves the legal fight was intended as a political advantage in the fight for control of Congress.
“There was no legal battle against the state drawn maps. I’ve always been bewildered at that,” Moore said. “It doesn’t surprise me that only the congressional maps were challenged, but I think it’s highly suspect as to why it was only the congressional maps challenged and not the state level maps challenged. They were drawn at the same time.”
When Moore joined Better Boundaries as a co-chair, he said his involvement was geared toward maintaining the Legislature’s authority over drawing state lines. But the recent legal fight, he said, morphed into being “more about determining an outcome than it is about the process.”
Elizabeth Rasmussen, who is now the executive director of Better Boundaries, disagreed with that characterization, saying the goal now, as it was then, is about ensuring a “fair and transparent” redistricting process. Rasmussen joined Better Boundaries in 2025, according to her LinkedIn profile, years after Moore left the group and was elected to Congress.
“Better Boundaries has never been about securing a specific outcome,” Rasmussen told the Deseret News in a statement. “I understand that headlines tend to focus on outcomes. But if you look at our work, it has been consistent from the start. End partisan gerrymandering. Follow the standards voters passed. Make sure no party has unilateral control over the process.”
Moore still believes in the role of independent commissions
Despite disagreeing with how Better Boundaries has fought in the latest redistricting battle, Moore said he still believes in the role of an independent commission advising state lawmakers when congressional boundaries are due for updates — which he says makes him different from some of his colleagues in Congress.
“I can’t say I support having a commission in place in California because it will help Republicans, and not say I would support an advisory commission in a red state,” Moore said. “There’s a goose and a gander here.”
Moore said he was inspired by Reagan’s push to establish bipartisan commissions to handle the drawing of congressional boundaries — echoing one of the original arguments from Better Boundaries supporters in 2018. Reagan was known for opposing partisan gerrymandering, calling the practice of manipulating districts “anti-democratic,” “un-American” and a “national disaster.”
Moore said he still supports the idea of utilizing independent panels — but argues those commissions should still be held to an advisory role.
“I like the use of commissions and ideas and standards and data and everything, because this is going on all across the country,” Moore said.
When asked about the redistricting war going on right now, Moore made his position clear: “I don’t like it when Republicans do it or Democrats do mid-decade redistricting. We should do it every 10 years to the very extent possible.”