Utah gerrymandering blocked--for now, anyway

Utah has four Congressional districts. While the state is heavily red, Salt Lake City, by far the largest city in the state, leans Democratic. The rest of the state is extremist-level dead-red, with the disciples of Brother Brigham going over 90% Republican, as religious fanatics do.

You might think that the fairest allocation would be to make Salt Lake City one district and divide the state geographically into the other three. But the Utah Republipigs had no interest in fairness. They drew a gerrymandered map where the state was divided into four districts, each one extending a looong finger into SLC. The intent, and effect, was to dilute the urban Democratic vote. All four districts went Trump in 2024.

However...voters, appalled at the evil and rabidly partisan map the Utah Legislature had drawn after the 2020 census, approved a ballot initiative in 2021 to form an independent redistricting commission to redraw the map. The Legislature ignored the voters and slightly redrew the existing map--and that revision favors the Republipigs even more. A suit was filed with the Utah Supreme Court to force the Legislature to allow the formation of the independent commission and follow its recommendations, as per the initiative. The suit was successful. Salt Lake City may soon be its own district.

I'm getting the feeling that the Texas criminal attempt to blot out Democratic representation may be creating a backlash, and not just in California. Partisan gerrymandering is much, much more egregious in red states. The Republipig goal is obviously to retain control of the House, but that may boomerang on them.

The worst part is that the red state gerrymandering legislatures NEVER ask the voters, or if they do, the voters are ignored, as they were in Utah. That's the difference between MAGA and Democrats:

Texas: fuck you, voters. This is what we're doing.

California: ballot initiative. We'll do this only if you approve.

MAGA=fascism.

When Mass gerrymanderis out the Republican districts that's ok in SAD Kevin world. 

I showed Kevin the map on how people voted & large part of the center of the state is republican; but in his warped mind that doesn't count. 

So do you disapprove of Utah doing that, then? Or are you a scummy little MAGA hypocrite?

What's good for the democrats is good for the republicans. 

So answer the question. Is gerrymandering wrong? You yeep and yeep and yeep about Democrats supposedly doing it. So do you approve of Republicans doing it, or not?

Don't weasel, you little hypocrite.

And I showed you that the red-leaning counties in the center of the state don't encompass a large enough percentage of the electorate to create a new district out of them, especially since MA lost one seat after the 2020 census. And Springfield, which votes Democrat, is also in the center of the state, just west of those red counties. Any district containing only those red counties would only contain 3 percent of the population. MA has nine seats, so proportional representation is 11% per seat.

So do you think 3 percent of the population should get its own Congressional representative?

Stupid Tom.

Democrats put forward a bill in the Senate in 2021 which would require all Congressional districts across the country be drawn by independant-non-partisan commissions.       Every Democrat unanimously voted for it.

All but 2 Republicans voted against it.    And that was not enough to overcome the filibuster.

History tells the truth about history.   Tom makes shit up.

Republicans lose with fair maps.   They know it.   Thats why they dont want it.

Tom bleats about gerrymandering without saying what it actually is. He also doesn't, despite his massive wisdom, tell us what the rules should be to draw district maps to ensure fair representation. We only know that he yeeps and whines when Democrats do it but barks and claps his flippers when Republicans do it.

What do you think the criteria should be? I have some opinions, but I'll share them in another thread.