One Utah

Redistricting is usually a bloodbath in Utah. It leads to horrifically drawn district boundaries that suggest the map-makers are either insane or blindly partisan Republicans (telling the difference is never easy). The gerrymandered outcomes, in all seriousness, are problematic - it’s all about elected officials picking their voters rather than voters picking their officials.

Utah allocates legislative seats according to population. The House has 75 members each of whom represents a district of approximately 30,000 people (state law allows a variance of plus or minus 4% from the goal of 29,776 people per district). The Senate has 29 members each of whom represents a district of approximately 77,000 people. The last redistricting, in 2001, was particularly heinous in its attempts to benefit Republicans; Jim Matheson’s only race in which he was endangered was 2002 - after Utah 2 was transformed from Salt Lake County to a vast swath of eastern Utah and most of southern Utah. Existing political boundaries were almost completely ignored in the redistricting - thus Salt Lake City was sliced and diced into multiple, irrationally designed districts, Salt Lake County was equally sliced, diced and filleted until it fit a pre-determined political agenda. The outcome has been a government that delivered School Vouchers and that is apparently about to give Chris Buttars one of the most powerful jobs in State Government. The outcome is a system in which dissenting voices are ignored and in which Ealge Forum groupthink has become standard operating procedure. Watching Utah’s legislature in action it’s difficult to avoid thinking that many our legislators actually don’t care about representing their constituents and instead focus on winning the approval of the hardest of the hard right special interests. Fixing the problem starts by fixing our broken redistricting system in which seats become spoils and political careers are valued above public service.

I believe we should use a non-partisan independent board for redistricting. Other states use this method and it works. It’s a reasonable reform, it allows legislators to focus on other matters and it removes any appearance of impropriety. It could have the advantage of improving elections and creating a more responsive state legislature. Such a board could and should operate along a specific set out of principles. District boundaries should, as much as possible, represent follow existing political boundaries; divisions could occur within an existing entity. Districts should be as geographically compact as possible. Districts should be drawn in such a way as to allow competitive elections (i.e. don’t deliberately safe districts). Elected officials should be able to reasonably represent the interests of their districts.

But, if we’re going to reform redistricting, why not go all the way? Why not adopt a full-fledged electoral and representative reform? Let’s look at switching Utah to a system of proportional representation?

The actual implementation presents some challenges. According to the Census Bureau, 76% of Utah’s population lives in 4 counties - Salt Lake, Utah, Davis and Weber. Add Cache and Washington counties and 85% of Utah’s population live in six of the 29 counties. The rest of the state is sparsely populated. Daggett county, for instance, has less than 1000 residents. Proportional representation isn’t just about population - it’s about creating a system in which voters feel reasonably confident their political views and values will be represented in government. I think we have to treat the House and Senate a little differently but not much.

First, we have to take the population of the state, 2,645,330 and each county. Seats are then apportioned to each county (or group of contiguous counties). In this model, Salt Lake County gets 29 seats and Utah county gets 14, Davis county gets 8, Weber gets 6, Cache county gets 3 and Washington County gets 4. In each of these counties, voter then vote for the party slate. The various political parties (Democrats, Republicans, Constitution, Green, Libertarian and so on) would establish a slate of candidates. When you voted, you vote for the party’s slate. To get a seat in the House, a party would have to get at least 35,000 votes (earn one seat). After the election, let’s say in Salt Lake County there were 330,000 votes cast in 2008 and of those votes 215,000 were for the Democratic slate and 115,000 were for the Republican slate (this is about Peter Corroon’s margin this month). Do the math - 19 Democrats and 10 Republicans then represent the county in the House. The Democrats send the first 19 people on their slate to the House, the Republicans the first ten. We can run through each county doing the same. In Utah County approximatley 75% of the votes are for the Republican slate so Utah County sends 11 Republicans and three Democrats. Washington County votes about the same so they send 3 Republicans and 1 Democrat and so on.

This is all find and well for the six dominant counties. They have 64 of the 75 seats. What about the remaining 23 counties? Some of them, like Summit, Iron, Box Elder and Tooele, all have at least 35,000 people. Tooele, for instance, has 54,000 people, not enough for two seats, but the residents certainly deserve to have their voices heard. So how can that problem be resolved?

I think the answer is to combine contiguous counties until they have a total population of at least 105,000 - three seats. Rich, Summit, Morgan, Duchesne, Wasatch, Uintah and Daggett counties in this model would become a single district with three seats. Why divide that way rather than say awarding Summit and Uintah each a single seat? The principle of proportional representation - by combining counties, it makes it more likely, not less, that each party would get enough votes to earn at least one seat, thus better representing the views and values of constituents.

We could run races at a state level and choose that way - each party would need a list of at least 50 candidates or so and then go from there. My concern with that approach is population distribution. At the end of the day, I think we’d see all our leadership coming from the six counties, speaking for their needs and concerns which are different than those of residents in San Juan or Emery county. It also allows, as population in places like Tooele and Cedar City grow, the possibility of awarding more seats to those areas as time goes on.

In the Senate, we’d divide by 91,000 rather than 35,000. Salt Lake County then sends 11 senators, Utah county 5, Davis county 3, Do the same county by county addition process until the combined population is enough to get 3 Senate seats. In this system, the three most populous counties in the Wasatch Front would provide 19 of our 29 State senators. The other ten would represent the rest of the state.

We could apply this system to electing our congressional delegation as well (fwiw, I don’t think we’d see much change in the partisan make up of our congressional delegation).

There are some obvious challenges in any kind of reform. Our Republican leadership on the Hill would HATE this method. It would, obviously, reduce the Republican advantage in the Legislature. Many of them would resist it on principle.

But I think also, it would strengthen our political system. For example, if the Republicans really Greg Curtis and believe he’s an effective leader for their caucus, he could stay in the house rather than fending off a strong challenger in his district and losing badly. By contrast, if he’s been a bad leader, they eliminate him before the slate is finalized - it makes party leaders more, not less, responsive. Bad, inefficient, scandal plagued politicians would be easier to remove from office - they would be answerable to the party if once they’re gone a replacement is easily found by going to the next name on the slate. If person number ten has been eliminated, person number 11 moves up one. I think we’d see an increase in voter participation. Third parties would also have an opportunity to gain influence. For instance, the Green Party candidate might get enough votes in Salt Lake to get a seat in the House while a Constitution party candidate would get enough in Southern Utah. As the system became more responsive to voters wishes, I think we’d see better lawmaking and the influence of limited interest groups like the Eagle Forum reduced. We could also streamline elections and introduce meaningful campaign finance reform. Individual candidates currently need to raise anywhere from 10,000 to 100,000 to win seats in our legislature. That means candidates are dedicating huge amounts of time to raising money. If they are running as part of a slate of candidates, it makes it easier to focus on campaigning and talking to voters. I think we could also shorten the time required for campaigning - the primary could take place six weeks before the first Tuesday in November. Condense the campaign calendar. Save money, time, and energy and let elected official focus on the issues of government rather than on the wedge issues that excite the most partisan members of the base and result in bad laws.

This entry was posted Saturday, November 15th, 2008 at 12:04 pm and is filed under American People, Democracy, Utah Legislature, Utah Politics. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.