The midterm map war comes to Utah

The nation’s redistricting war reached a climax this month as yearslong legal battles, historic court rulings and political pressures empowered Republicans to rearrange state electoral boundaries, while Democratic efforts were less successful.

Beginning with Texas redrawing its maps last summer to net five additional GOP-leaning seats at the behest of President Donald Trump, five other red states have broken with the once-in-a-decade norm to benefit their party ahead of November.

Republicans have drawn 9-12 friendlier seats in Ohio, which had to redistrict by statute; Texas; Missouri; North Carolina; Florida; and Tennessee. These last two came after the Supreme Court in April ruled states cannot draw congressional lines based on race.

California jumped into the fray in November, when voters approved a proposal to temporarily override the state’s independent redistricting commission to convert five seats into Democratic territory. But elsewhere, Democrats have not been so lucky.

A Virginia plan to forge four new Democratic seats was struck down by the state’s high court in May, and threats from Illinois and Maryland have gone unfulfilled. Meanwhile, Georgia and Louisiana might add two more seats to the Republican tally.

Lumped in with this mid-cycle mayhem, which could determine congressional control in the 2026 midterms, is Utah’s own battle over district boundaries that has resulted in a safe Democratic seat in Salt Lake County amid GOP opposition.

Utah’s messy legal showdown between the Legislature and activist groups has led to allegations of gerrymandering from both sides as voters remain divided over the underlying ballot initiative that removed final redistricting authority from lawmakers.

The old map, approved after legislators struck a compromise on Utah’s redistricting commission, appeared to intentionally “crack” the Democratic vote in Salt Lake City. Now, the new court-ordered map appears to “pack” the Democratic vote into one district.

Utah may have begun its redistricting brawl all the way back in 2018, but it has since become another player in the partisan pit fight over maps.

Utah’s unique case also raises the same questions about what makes a good map and how gerrymandering can be prevented.

Cox: New map is gerrymandered

Utah Gov. Spencer Cox took a combative tone at a Deseret News/Atlantic panel last week when asked whether he should have stopped his party from pushing through a self-serving map. The governor turned the criticism back onto the groups who advocated for a new map.

“We are a supermajority Republican state,” Cox said, noting that registered Republicans outnumber Democrats nearly 4:1. “I think the only way to get a Democratic district in this state is to gerrymander a Democratic district, which is what the courts did.”

In August, 3rd District Judge Dianna Gibson ruled that a 2020 law reforming Utah’s redistricting process, put in place through Proposition 4, was unconstitutional. She reinstated the original version of Proposition 4 and tossed out the state’s map, which she said violated it.

The old map had eliminated the state’s only competitive district, which a Democrat, Ben McAdams, won in 2018. Lawmakers instead drew four safe Republican seats by splitting up one neighborhood in Millcreek between the districts, significantly diluting Utah’s Democratic vote.

The new map — submitted by nonprofits, and selected by Gibson in November — drew a circle around the most Democratic part of the state, home to 40% of Utah’s actively registered Democrats, giving the party a 15-percentage point advantage, based on recent races.

The Utah Constitution gives map-drawing power to the Legislature, according to Cox, who said lawmakers rightly believe that a fair map can be drawn with GOP-majority seats.

Ultimately, Cox said, a focus on gerrymandering ignores the real issues in American politics.

“I hate the midterm redistricting. I will say that. I hate it. I absolutely hate it. I don’t think gerrymandering is what broke our country. I don’t think it’s in the top 20,” Cox said. “It’s not the best thing for our country, but it’s not the reason we’re having all of these problems.”

How do you draw a fair map?

Gerrymandering can play an important role in exacerbating polarization, however, according to Harvard Law professor Nicholas Stephanopoulos, one of the top experts on redistricting in the nation, who helped develop gerrymandering metrics like the Efficiency Gap.

Gerrymandering, defined as making electoral boundaries with the intent and effect of benefiting the line-drawing side, distorts fair partisan representation of communities, Stephanopoulos said, making it less likely that Congress as a whole will reflect shifts in public opinion.

The Utah redistricting lawsuit found that the old map performed poorly on mathematical measures of partisan bias. And most computer simulations of compact, contiguous districts with few county splits produced one Democratic-leaning district in the state.

This made Utah “a relatively easy case” of gerrymandering, Stephanopoulos told the Deseret News. It is a pattern observed across the country, he said, of Republicans splitting urban areas into rural districts, and Democrats combing rural areas with urban districts.

Unlike the other redistricting battles taking place around the country, Utah is an instance of the political process producing more fair maps, according to Stephanopoulos. This may have angered the dominant party, “but that’s exactly the point,” Stephanopoulos said.

“The question is not whether Republicans like it,” he added. “The question is whether it’s good for systemic partisan fairness. And I think redrawing Utah’s map was good for systemic fairness, both on a Utah-specific level and also on a nationwide level.”

How to fix the gerrymandering problem

Advocates of redistricting commissions, and judicial oversight of map drawing, forget partisan politics cannot be removed from the process, according to Hans von Spakovsky, a senior election law expert at Advancing American Freedom, a conservative think tank.

Redistricting commissions often produce maps that are just as tilted toward one party or another, Spakovsky said, pointing to California’s commission, which implemented a congressional map with 42 Democratic and 7 Republican seats even though 40% of the state votes Republican.

Other blue states have taken gerrymandering to its extreme, Spakovsky said: Only one of Maryland’s eight representatives is Republican, even though one third of the state votes red. Only three of Illinois’ 17 representatives are Republican, but 40% of voters are.

“Everyone is talking as if the kind of partisan gerrymandering going on right now started in the past year,” Spakovsky told the Deseret News. “The Republicans didn’t initiate this. They’re just simply finally adopting the tactics the Democrats have been practicing for years.”

Red states might be “catching up with” blue states, but Spakovsky thinks lawmakers should restrict themselves to compact maps that don’t split jurisdictions. Where Utah’s Proposition 4 went wrong, he said, was including ambiguous partisan fairness rules, opening the state up to lawsuits.

Eric McGhee, a fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California, who created the “efficiency gap” metric, disagreed. He told the Deseret News legal standards for fair maps help prevent partisans from drawing districts to limit the effectiveness of the other party’s voters.

Utah Republicans are split on the issue.

U.S. Rep. Blake Moore, who was an original sponsor of the Proposition 4 petition, told the Deseret News “every state should reckon with this.” He proposed all 50 governors should convene in 2030 to set nationwide redistricting standards to stop the spiral of mid-decade map-drawing by states.

Former Rep. Jason Chaffetz, who is eyeing a bid for Utah governor, told the Deseret News redistricting is the job of elected lawmakers, and not unaccountable judges. He said his focus is on how the status of birthright citizenship will impact the reapportionment of congressional seats.

The political implications of new congressional maps are clear.

Utah’s new 1st District will make Democratic primaries the center of attention for the first time in years, according to political consultant Marty Carpenter. But it could also spark widespread backlash against Proposition 4 if it is seen as producing a radically progressive candidate.

What Carpenter thinks is missing from the conversation is a little bit of generosity toward the map drawers.

“When you say ‘gerrymandering’ in a way that’s loaded with some kind of passion behind it, it’s that somebody’s putting their interests ahead of the public interest,” Carpenter told the Deseret News. “But the fact of the matter is, it’s just tougher to draw maps than most people realize.”