(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) Legislators in the House of Representatives during a special session at the State Capitol in Salt Lake City on Wednesday, May 19, 2021.
Right now there is one word that we hear a lot about on the news: redistribution. It is the process by which all of our state’s voting cards are made for the next 10 years. For the past decade, Utah residents have gotten bogged down with split country-city maps that have watered down the voices of those living along the Wasatch Front by cutting their communities into pieces.
In the 2020 election, 35% of the votes cast for Utah’s congressional candidates were for a Democrat, and yet all four of our state’s congressional seats are held by Republicans. That is a result of these gerrymandered maps.
Now it looks like the GOP super majority is preparing to do the same this time around. What did Legislative Redistricting Committee chairman Rep. Paul Ray say about the idea that communities like Salt Lake City shouldn’t be split into congressional districts? “Much luck.” That seems to be the prevailing attitude among Republican legislators: good luck with representing your communities fairly.
There seems to be a myth that dividing communities in different ways gives people in cities more representation, not less. This is a common message from GOP leaders in our state who want to find a way to justify community sharing in order to maximize the political benefits of their own party. They say that dividing Salt Lake City into three districts will give them triple representation in Congress, or dividing Ogden into six different State House districts will give citizens six times representation in the legislature.
That sounds nice, but in reality it is not. Putting Salt Lake City in the same district as Republican strongholds like Richfield, Cedar City and St. George, Republican MP Chris Stewart can comfortably ignore his voters from Salt Lake City because they did not vote for him while voters from other parts of the world County did. Likewise, Rep. John Curtis and Rep. Burgess Owens can ignore their voters in Salt Lake County and focus on voters in red Utah County.
Instead of being represented by three members of Congress, as Republicans would like to claim, Salt Lake County’s residents are being ignored by three members of Congress.
Despite the fact that rural Utah is already receiving undue attention from our state’s legislature and members of Congress, Republicans on the Hill are still driving the story forward that we need more rural representation. Some, like State Representative Phil Lyman, have even endorsed the idea of guaranteeing at least one state seat per district, which would give even more power to sparsely populated rural districts (not to mention being blatantly unconstitutional).
These efforts to dilute and devalue the voices of Utahners living along the Wasatch Front (who make up about 80% of the population of our state) are nothing more than a means to an end for Republican politicians who want to keep their power, in fact at the expense of a fair representation of all Utahns.
It hurts everyone to group rural and urban areas together for political purposes, whether you live in a small town, downtown Salt Lake City, or on the Wasatch Front suburb. In order for all of the different areas of our state to be truly represented, they need to be drawn into districts that respect their communities and focus on fair cards rather than political games.
If you believe that the voices of every Utahn in our government should be fairly heard and represented, then speak to your lawmakers today and let them know that you believe in truly fair and equitable voting cards, the churches don’t separate for political reasons. This is our chance to shape our representation for the next decade, and we cannot afford to let it by. We have to advocate fair voting cards.
Ben Anderson is studying political science at Weber State University. He is also a communications intern at Alliance for a Better Utah.
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