Brian’s Utah Weblog

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.