Nine Circles of Shell

Utah Policy is Insane

I subscribed to Utah Policy, an email newsletter focused on Utah politics, hopeful that it would at least feign centrism. I am disappointed, but not terribly surprised, to report that Utah Policy's opinion section can largely be written as right-wing propoganda. Exhibit A: redistricting.

In a piece titled Opinion: Why Republicans feel justified in rejecting maps proposed by Redistricting Commission, LaVarr Webb looks at justifications for why Utah Republicans will feel okay ignoring the independent redistricting commission created by a 2018 ballot initiative. The whole thing reads less like an explanatory piece of why they will feel fine ignoring the recommendations and more as a justification for doing so. He also makes some really stupid points so let us go over those.

Webb's first point is basically that because the ballot initiative did not win by a large enough margin, we should all feel fine ignoring it.

Because they feel a majority of their own constituents didn’t want the commission created in the first place. It’s been mostly forgotten that voters in 2018 approved creation of the commission by a tiny margin of 6,944 votes statewide, out of more than one million votes cast. Prop 4, creating the commission, won 50.34 percent to 49.66 percent.

To his point that the initiative won by a slim margin statewide... what is the point? Ballot initiatives are STATEWIDE. We do not vote for delegates who then come to the capitol and vote on the initiative. This is how direct democracy works, unless they intend to introduce the filibuster for ballot initiatives (don't give them any ideas), a win by less than 1% is still a win.

Webb goes on to highlight the concept of communities of interest, calling into question the need to even draw new districts in Utah. If it were true that we do not need to redraw the districts because communities of interest are already represented, then any recommendation from the Redistricting Committee would be a non-starter. Makes sense. So what is the big argument for not redrawing Utah's districts?

Utahns, including suburbanites and urbanites, love Utah’s public lands and feel a kinship to rural Utah. So rural Utah is part of their community of interest.

There you have it. Because everyone loves our public lands, we should make sure that each district has a stake in it. That is the reason why we need to split the most liberal sectors of our state three ways. No need to worry about the fact that giving urban Utahns "a stake" in public lands means diluting their votes. If we are defining communities of interest as anyone who likes being outdoors in Utah, then why not just cut the whole state into four evenly sized squares? The answer to that very dumb question is because Republicans know this conception of "communities of interest" is BS and are just using it as a cover to gerrymander.

So there you have it. Republicans don't actually like democracy. Horrifying. Happy Halloween!