Brian’s Utah Weblog

The Utah Legislature organized a whirlwind redistricting committee these past two weeks. The final approval by a special session is pending for next week. On the assumption that we’ll be facing a vote on Map L, let’s take a look at who won and lost so far.

Governor Huntsman (R-UT) wants to get back the fourth congressional seat Utah was cheated out of in 2001. A fourth congressional seat for Utah is a remote possibility in the lame duck session in D.C. next month. To have any chance at all to put this victory on his resumé, Huntsman needs a new map that would appeal to Washington insiders from both parties.

Utah did prepare a four district map in 2001. That map was drawn in case the Bureau of the Census was frustrated in its under counting of missionaries or its illegal sampling of empty households in larger states. Either repair would have given Utah a fourth seat, but the courts declined to order the fixes. Instead the seat went to North Carolina.

That existing map, like our present three district map, was drawn to unseat Congressman Jim Matheson (D-UT2). Huntsman knows that the deal to give Utah a fourth seat needs bipartisan support to survive with Democrats favoring a congressman for Washington D.C. and Republicans favoring a new seat for Utah. But if the map tries to squeeze out Jim Matheson, Democrats won’t support the deal. So what Huntsman really wants out of this process is any map with a reliably safe district for Jim Matheson.

And the committee drew a safe Democratic district for Jim Matheson. Governor Huntsman gets what he wants.

Utah’s Democratic Party wants to avoid being gerrymandered into an even tinier minority in the legislature. Last time in 2001 Republicans squeezed eight Democrats together into districts where they would have to run against other Dems to be reelected. The few Democratic leaning districts they left were drawn larger than the Republican leaning districts to minimize the number of Democrats elected.

Democrats had little worry that the bad experience of 2001 would be repeated this month since the governor was pressing for a safe district for Jim Matheson. Even though Democrats won 43% of the vote for congress from Utahns in 2006, there is little chance any map that would allow a second Democrat to win a congressional seat would pass through the legislature or win support from the D.C. Republicans. So Democrats should have been using this experience as a platform to advocate reform of the redistricting process in advance of 2011.

Real reform of the process would involve prioritized, objective criteria to be applied by a bipartisan commission outside the legislature. That was the basis of the most successful redistricting reform in the nation now operating in Iowa. Unfortunately the Democrats focused on the bipartisan nature of the commission without focusing on the prioritized, objective criteria the commission would apply. Representative Roz McGee’s (D-SLC) proposed constitutional amendment suffers from the same problem; while it lists principles to apply, it lacks a mandate to use prioritized, objective criteria for drawing districts.

The problem with the way the system runs now is that the majority party draws districts for itself to eliminate the people’s ability to choose representatives from another party. The problem with a bipartisan commission without prioritized, objective criteria for how districts can be drawn is that insiders from both parties will carve up the state to preserve existing insiders’ power. With insiders now three quarters Republican that’s nearly as bad for the Democrats as the current process. The benefit from Iowa style districting is that Iowa has the most competitive elections in the United States and the strongest influence from the grassroots in legislative elections.

Democratic Party Chair Wayne Holland spoke to newspapers and sent press releases boosting a bipartisan commission and earned media coverage for the idea. Unfortunately Senator Curt Bramble (R-Utah County) repeatedly knocked the idea with the accurate criticism that bipartisan redistricting just changes which people get to do the partisan carving. I haven’t seen any coverage of Iowa style districting in local media outlets.

The Democratic Party needs publicity for the idea of reforming the redistricting process. The quality of Democrats’ publicity was mixed.

Democratic legislators wanted to be involved in the process instead of ignored. They also want to avoid making themselves targets in 2011.

They succeeded in getting listened to and having input on the final map. The committee record indicates a little push back by Representative David Litvack (D-SLC) against the Democratic Party message that the current partisan process is unfair. While it’s true that this one time partisans were constrained by Huntsman, it doesn’t pay to dilute the message that Republicans will be vicious again in 2011 if they can be. Litvack was one of the Democrats drawn out of his district in 2001 so he should know better than anyone.

In the end, some of the Democratic legislators’ concerns were addressed in the map.

Republican legislators wanted a district drawn for themselves to run in someday or one for an ally of theirs. The new fourth district takes in the homes of LaVar Christensen, Steve Urquhart, and John Swallow — all Republican legislators who recently run for national office. Unless Jim Matheson decides to run in the fourth district, some Republican legislator is likely to win if that district is created. Congressman Chris Cannon (R-UT3) was not drawn into a district that will make his perennial intraparty challenge easier.

Quite a lot of Republican legislators just wanted Jim Matheson drawn out of their districts so that the Matheson turnout machine wouldn’t be helping out their opponents every two years. With Matheson in a district that’s almost all represented by Democrats, they get their wish.

One district was drawn just for Republican legislators.

Hill Air Force Base workers and contractors almost won a big prize by accident.

Right now any congressman from the First district focuses on winning and keeping missions and jobs for Hill. Several proposed maps would have put South Ogden, South Weber, or other parts of the Hill community into another district, just to balance population numbers. The bonus for Hill and the state would be another focused advocate for Utah’s most important federal facility in congress.

Perhaps it would be an advocate who didn’t vote against job protections, benefits, and fair wages for Hill workers like current Representative Rob Bishop (R-UT1) does.

But the final committee map won’t include much of the Hill community in any district but the First. Hill AFB workers didn’t have a big win.

Rural Utahns make up 12% of the state according to the Bureau of the Census; Utahns argue that it’s a few percent more. The Utah Republican Party is dominated by suburban representatives who want to dilute rural strength by diluting their votes into all four possible districts. Republicans would like to dilute urban strength the same way, but that conflicts with Governor Huntsman’s desire to create a safe district for Jim Matheson. Democrats even proposed a map (Map G) that would let rural Utahns dominate one of the four districts.

It could have been worse because rural Utah was divided into only three and not four districts.

Incumbent Congressmen all saw their districts get safer. Chris Cannon (R-UT3) will see fewer of his frequent intraparty challengers. Congressman Rob Bishop’s (R-UT1) district gets more Republican. Jim Matheson (D-UT2) should run in the new fourth district to give us a chance to add a new Democrat in the second, but he might run in the second which is now much more Democratic. So the incumbents should be pleased.

Utah communities want to be kept together with like minded neighbors and not split. Except for Hill AFB workers mentioned above who wanted exactly the opposite.

Most Park City and western Summit County commenters wanted to be combined with Salt Lake County and split from North Summit and South Summit and they get their wish in the final proposal.

Carbon County voters are the strongest constituency for Rep. Matheson and they will be split from his district so they’re unhappy.

Senator Buttars (R-South Jordan) wanted South Jordan and West Jordan together and he got his wish.

Salt Lake City voters wanted to be reunited after the current plan split the City down the middle and they were.

In the end, some communities got what they wanted and others did not.

Last, as always, come the people. The people are best served by competitive districts. It was the intention of the committee to draw four districts that were all less competitive than the three we have now. Unless Matheson runs in the new fourth district, the people will lose the one competitive district we have.

Five years ago I booked a last minute ticket to fly home (my round trip ticket couldn’t be changed) and sat in a snowstorm four hours on the runway. Eventually we departed for Salt Lake and arrived in the middle of the night. I was barely in time for Charlotte’s arrival in the world just before 3:00 am.

Today Charlotte turns five years old. Here she is blowing out candles.

Check out the cookie turkeys.

Yes, those are chocolate chip pancakes that Charlotte and Rosalie are eating.

More than a decade ago, people who were disappointed with holidays dominated by consumerism started to set aside the busiest shopping day of the year as “Buy Nothing Day.”

Immediately after the family gatherings of Thanksgiving millions of Americans start their holiday shopping.  Instead we could take the day to renew our appreciation that the best things in life cannot be bought with money.  And we could avoid the crowds.

Buy Nothing Day 2006 is November 24th.  Celebrate in your own way.

I’ve been running a poll this week on the results of the general canvass and articles predicting, among other things, a solid win for County Auditor-elect Jeff Hatch. Here are the poll results among readers here,

Congrats to those who picked “Two.” But it doesn’t hurt to guess wrong so next time there’s a poll, let’s have more folks give it a whirl.

Now it’s time for me to go catch the train.

Chris at YDems handled the liveblogging for today. I couldn’t be at the redistricting committee, so I was happy to see another member of the Utah blogging community there to cover it.

A technology note on the difference between blogging at the county and the legislature:

The legislature’s wireless internet is great but Salt Lake County’s wireless internet is not as wonderful.  While the bandwidth is great, the county has chosen to block access to an apparently random set of sites.  And no, I wasn’t surfing illicit sites in a room with 40 other people walking in and out looking over my shoulder. The county also closes off all outgoing ports except 80 and 443, which makes server maintenance next to impossible.

FINAL RESULTS (two election results change):

4:42 Here we are at 4:42 in the County Council chambers as the council is about to reconvene to count ballots in its capacity as the Board Of Canvassers. Planned start time for this session was 4:40.

4:46 Convening, Sherrie Swensen is speaking.

4:47 Races that changed: State Rep 22, Carl Duckworth (D-Magna) wins by 33 votes. County Auditor Elect Jeff Hatch wins by 1235 votes.

Races with no change: Laura Black loses to Rep. Mark Walker by 18 votes. Speaker Greg Curtis retains his office over Jay Seegmiller by 19.

Good News

Parents For Choice In Education loses its one success and the state House gets one seat more secure for public education. If you were worried about public education (the previous poll subject here), take this as a big victory.

Bad News

I really wanted to defeat Greg Curtis, and we didn’t;  Jay Seegmiller would have made us proud in the House. Laura Black would have been (and may yet be in another year) a great legislator.

Final

Here at the County Council work chamber candidates in razor thin races like Jay Seegmiller, Laura Black, Jeff Hatch, and Phil Riesen sat to hear Salt Lake County Clerk Sherrie Swensen reveal the final results to the County Board Of Canvassers. Two Democrats had something to celebrate. District 22 Rep. Carl Duckworth (D-Magna) survived the challenger who was ahead by 25 votes on election night and reversed that into a 33 vote margin for his reelection and County Auditor-elect Jeff Hatch reversed a 344 vote deficit to win by 1235 votes.

It was a heartbreaker, though, for Laura Black who challenged District 45 Rep. Mark Walker (R-Murray) and Jay Seegmiller who challenged House Speaker and District 49 Rep. Greg Curtis (R-Sandy).

Seegmiller was 46 votes behind and almost made up the difference only to lose by 19. Knocking off Greg Curtis would have been an important symbolic victory. Maybe Jay will agree to get out and run for the sake of Utah one more time. Laura Black was down 32 on election day and ended up down 18. Both Black and Seegmiller will request the automatic recounts in their districts.

One special point is that Parents For Choice In Education, the anti-public school group with almost a million dollars of out of state money, lost the one race it claimed to have swung this year when Carl Duckworth survived. PCE relied on lies and unfounded attack flyers against Democrats because they knew their real agenda of draining money out of public schools for out of state corporations was opposed by voters. It’s nice to see people like that lose.

Final Salt Lake County election results.

When the canvass is done today, the poll will come down.  Vote on the main page in the right hand column.  The Salt Lake County Board Of Canvassers is starting their final meeting right now.

This is an ongoing liveblog of the speculative fourth seat drawing hearing. Earlier I posted a detailed new article (with charts!) about hopes for the final vote counting in Salt Lake now occuring just twenty-four blocks down State Street.

Public comment will be accepted at the 8:00 am meeting tommorrow and there will be meetings around the state. Tentative times,

• Monday November 27: 9:00 am in Provo, 1:00 pm in Price, 5:00pm in St. George
• Tuesday November 28th 9:00 am in Ogden, 1:00 pm in Park City, 5:00 pm in Salt Lake City

The hearing is adjourned.

The staff has handed out four proposed maps for the state.

• Map A is the 2001 proposed four district map.
• Map B
  1. District 1 is a smaller Top Of Utah
  2. District 2 is compacted into northern Salt Lake County with Summit, Daggett, and Morgan counties
  3. District 3 is Utah County with parts of the West Desert and West Jordan
  4. District 4 is southern Salt Lake (South Jordan to Sandy) plus rural Utah from Wasatch and Carbon down to San Juan and Utah’s Dixie
• Map C is shifted from Map B so that district 3 takes Dixie and San Juan from district 4. The effect would be to protect LaVar or John Swallow from a primary challenge from Rep. Steve Urquhart or Rep. Clark. I’d note that the changes between maps B and C indicate that at least one of them has districts of unequal size even beyond what the committee agreed was appropriate.
• Map D doesn’t have districts numbered but puts West Jordan in with Utah county, has a district like District 2 in Map B and puts Dixie and San Juan back in with southern Salt Lake.

I’ll put up copies of the maps later if the committee doesn’t post them on the legislature’s site.

Sen. Buttars (R-South Jordan) suggests that Speaker Pelosi (D-San Francisco) will ensure D.C. representation whether or not Utah gets a fourth seat. There’s some internal politics related to the 103rd Congress and floor procedure in the national legislature involved in this that I’ll explain later if anyone asks in the comments.

Now there is a recess until 10:00 am.

Update (2:00 pm): Three of the maps are up on the legislature’s web site. Check for the “Related Materials.”

I’m at the legislature this morning enjoying the quality facilities and wi-fi in the joint redistricting committee hearing.

The committee is adopting principles to guide the redistricting.

So far it’s nothing you haven’t heard but two minor things have transpired that are not exactly right,

• The committee has agreed that partisan political data is not to be included in the official record or committee discussions. This is not a Supreme Court guideline as the committee counsel suggested. In fact, the Supreme Court has refused to strike down even the Pennsylvania plan of 2002 and the Texas plan of 2003 which the Court identified as abusively partisan. Justice Kennedy, a swing vote on this issue, did say that it was possible that at some time in the future an even more abusive plan could possibly, maybe be bad enough to strike down.
• The committee adopted a guideline that districts be within one-half percent in total population. Counsel suggested this would be acceptably equal. That would be a deviation of about 2,700 citizens. In 2002 federal courts in Pennsylvania ruled that a deviation of 19 citizens was unconstitutional and ordered the legislature to remap the districts to make them closer in population.

Salt Lake County Absentee votes get counted Monday and Tuesday. The unofficial election results we saw two weeks ago will change, as I explained last week. Let’s see what we can learn about early and absentee votes from a look at detailed data about individual voters.

The early voting returns showed a strong Democratic trend, with even Pete Ashdown up over Orrin Hatch (R-Big Pharma) by 20%. Early voting is new this year and our great county clerk Sherrie Swensen promoted it widely so the wide advantage of one party compared to election day results was unexpected. The +25% Democratic trend indicates not just that early Democratic turnout was stronger than Republican but that a large proportion of independent voters (more than 2/3) voted for Democratic candidates.

I took a list of the early voters day by day and matched them against my lists of partisan voters, mostly by voter registration, and plotted them over time. The final week of early voting was apparently similar to this trend, but I don’t have individual data for it yet.

Remember that Republican Registration runs higher than Democratic countywide among active voters, about 26% D, 28% R, 46% I. But a lot of those I’s are Republican primary voters who changed their registration back to independent. Nevertheless, independents lean Democratic just enough to make Salt Lake County a slightly Democratic leaning county with all three countywide council positions, the mayorship, and Salt Lake votes for governor in the past two cycles all going to the Democrat. (I’d argue our candidates were just better, but that’s a lot of wins in a row.)

You can tell that the trend here is not registered Democrats with a 25% advantage but must include a very strong current of independent voters to the Democratic candidates added to the small registration advantage.

As I detailed last week, there are still 3000 absentee ballots to be counted. They come in and get counted slowly so many, possibly most, absentee ballots are still uncounted. The late absentees will be counted for the first time Monday and Tuesday so let’s take a look at the trends in who voted absentee up to the beginning of November and see where it’s heading.

Looks a lot like the early voter trend doesn’t it? Unless there is some large and unexplained difference between early voters and absentee voters of the same party, we should expect to see a significant lead in Democratic registered voters and another large lead among independent voters trending Democratic.

Remember, I predicted that the 600 paper ballots would trend about 3-to-1 Democratic and the 7,000 provisional ballots would trend Democratic on the east side and Republican on the west side (based on the affiliations of recent arrivals, those most likely to vote provisional). I now predict the 3,000 absentee votes will come in just like early votes, with a 25% Democratic advantage.

Remember,

• Carl Duckworth needs 25 votes to rejoin the State House
• Laura Black needs 32 votes to join the State House
• Jay Seegmiller needs 46 votes to join the State House
• Jeff Hatch needs 344 votes to be Salt Lake County Auditor

I predict that Jeff Hatch will be our new County Auditor and that Laura Black is the most likely candidate to swing her House election. But I’d like to see them all win.

It’s Time For You To Vote!

There’s a poll in the right hand column on the main page of Brian’s Utah Weblog. Vote on how many of the four possible will turn their elections around in the final canvass. Don’t worry if your opinion isn’t based on extensive solid data; I want to see your dreams and speculations, too. Thank you for participating.

Four very important races in Utah are undecided, but nationally there are also two congressional elections continuing into December.

Louisiana has long held open all-party primaries and then runoff elections a month later. Recently the primaries are held in November and the runoffs in December. One congressional seat is still undecided, LA-2 in New Orleans. The incumbent is William Jefferson, a fellow who was dropped off his congressional committees after begin caught with $90,000 in bribe money in his freezer. The Democratic challenger is Karen Carter (why no website, Karen?) but some local bloggers suggest she might not be able to win. That kind of thing happens in Louisiana but it’s important for Dems to be squeeky clean — now more than ever — so don’t send us the crook, cajuns.

After Tom DeLay raised millions in illegal money to have Texas redistricted (and had the decency to resign in disgrace, unlike some folks in New Orleans), some of the districts drawn to disenfranchise non-white people were found to be illegal. The courts redrew them and held primaries in November with runoffs to follow just like Louisiana. Only one district has a runoff. TX-23 is choosing between former Democratic congressman Ciro Rodriguez and Republican congressman Henry Bonilla.

Bonilla has voted time and again for Dubya Bush’s plan to put Utahns downwind from new nuclear tests. When Rodriguez was in Congress he voted consistently for the health of Utah’s children and families and against new testing, so let’s all root for Ciro.

Next weekend is Charlotte’s fifth birthday so today we take a look back at baby Charlotte on her two week birthday.

One answer to the mystery of why Utah Democrats didn’t have a wave election this year is that we did and just don’t know it. I disagree but proponents have four strong points,

1. Representative Carl Duckworth (D-Magna)
2. Representative Laura Black (D-Murray)
3. Representative Jay Seegmiller (D-Sandy)
4. County Auditor Jeff Hatch (D-Salt Lake)

These look like pretty weak arguments since all of these candidates lost last Tuesday. But between the Trib article yesterday and the news I have from Democratic Party insiders watching the ballot verification process, there is reason for hope.

• Duckworth needs 25 more votes in district 22
• Black needs 32 more votes in district 45
• Seegmiller needs 46 more votes in district 49
• Hatch needs 344 more votes countywide

There are about 600 paper ballots in Salt Lake County requested by voters who could have used electronic machines but didn’t want to. None of them have been counted yet. Consider who makes a special request to vote on paper ballots. Those votes will be from skeptics of unrestrained government power, paper ballot and verifiable voting activists, and computer programmers who know just how unreliable Diebold’s design is. In other words, Democrats.

Also paper ballot voters will be Ashdown voters as the Pete Ashdown campaign was the only organized effort asking Utah voters to vote on paper.

The net result should be a Democratic advantage in those 600 ballots even stronger than Democrats’ early voting advantage. Probably the Democrats will win 3-1 or more. That would be about 300 net votes for Jeff Hatch and 10 votes each for Democrats running in legislative seats. But the demographic of voting activists means those district margins are likely to be much greater in districts like 45 and 49 with lots of middle class professionals. Duckworth is unlikely to get anything like 10 net votes in district 22 which is more blue collar.

Then there are 10,000 or more absentee and provisional ballots.

About 7,000 provisionals are likely to be found valid, most of them cast by voters who moved within Salt Lake county and didn’t reregister in time. Those usually trend Democratic so there should be a few votes in there for Democrats in close races. The demographic moving into district 22 is more Republican than current residents so it might not help Duckworth but the new residents in districts 49 and 45 are more Democratic than the older residents.

And there are the 3000 late absentees. They’re late because they arrived the week of the election or later, though postmarked before the election. We know that early voters were much more likely to vote Democratic than election day voters in Utah’s 2006 election but we don’t know the trends of absentee voters as clearly.

I have the absentee voter list right here in front of me and looking at the absentees returned in the last week of October as compared to the two previous weeks I see an accelerating trend of Democratic registered voters returning ballots more reliably than Republicans. And there are enough Democratic voters’ ballots listed as requested and still out for the final week to keep the trend up.

At the end of the last week of October absentees were at 40% D, 28% R, 32% I. That is in spite of a countywide Republican registration advantage. Note that independents were swinging strongly D in the early voting.

Going into the last week I see at least 41 D, 35 R, and 57 independent absentee ballots requested and outstanding in the Curtis-Seegmiller race (not including voters whose information is incomplete, about 15%). With a good independent swing, that will be a very close race. Let’s hope that Republicans find the leadership elections where they reelected corrupt Speaker Curtis prove very premature.

Get Out The Vote!

There’s a new poll in the right hand column (on the main page, click the top banner to get there). Don’t worry if you don’t know for sure; this is your chance for wild speculation before the general canvass Tuesday. Vote now, the polls will close when the county counts the actual votes.