Voters Should Pick Their Politicians, Not the Other Way Around

Why this matters

Every ten years, someone draws the lines that decide which neighborhoods vote together for Congress. Done fairly, it’s a boring job. Done for advantage, it can decide elections before a single ballot is cast.

That’s gerrymandering, and both parties do it wherever they can. The name comes from Elbridge Gerry, a Massachusetts governor who signed off on a salamander-shaped district in 1812. Gerry had been a delegate in Philadelphia when the Constitution was written. The men who designed the House knew exactly how it could be gamed. They built it to resist that anyway.

What the Framers wanted from the House

The Senate was built to speak for the states. The House was built to speak for the people, directly and closely.

Chosen by the people. The Constitution says House members are “chosen every second Year by the People of the several States.” At the time, it was the only part of the federal government voters picked directly. Senators were chosen by state legislatures until 1913.
Seats follow population. House seats are divided among the states by headcount, with a new count every ten years. The point was for the chamber to grow and shift as the country did.
Short terms, on purpose. In Federalist 52, Madison wrote that the House should have “an immediate dependence on, and an intimate sympathy with, the people.” Two-year terms meant members would always be about to face the voters again.
The great body of the people. In Federalist 57, Madison said the House’s electors would be neither the rich nor the well-born, but “the great body of the people” of the whole country.

The Supreme Court later put it plainly. In Wesberry v. Sanders (1964), it ruled that as nearly as practicable, one person’s vote for Congress has to be worth as much as another’s. That’s why every district in a state must have about the same number of people.

But equal population isn’t enough. You can draw four districts with exactly the same headcount and still decide the winner of every one. When the map does that, the House stops depending on the people. The people end up depending on whoever drew the map.

How it’s done: cracking and packing

There are two basic ways to waste someone’s vote.

Cracking splits a community into pieces and attaches each piece to a bigger group that outvotes it. Each piece is too small to win anywhere.

Packing does the opposite. It crams a group into as few districts as possible, so it wins those by enormous margins. Every vote past what was needed to win is a vote that could have counted somewhere else.

Both do the same damage. Real voters with real concerns end up with less say in the House than their numbers deserve. Utah has now lived through both.

Utah’s long road to fair maps

2018: The voters act. After decades of complaints that the Legislature drew lines to protect itself, citizens gathered signatures and put Prop 4 on the ballot. It created an independent commission to recommend maps and banned drawing them to favor a party. It passed with 50.3% of the vote, about 7,000 votes.

2020: The Legislature rewrites it. Lawmakers passed SB 200, which kept the commission but made its maps advisory. It also dropped the requirement that the Legislature hold an up-or-down vote on the commission’s maps and explain publicly why it rejected them.

2021: The commission is ignored. The commission proposed maps. The Legislature set them all aside and drew its own, which split Salt Lake County among all four congressional districts. The four districts came together in Millcreek, so close that you could walk through all of them before a milkshake melted. Republicans won every seat in 2022 and 2024 by wide margins.

Boundaries simplified for display. Sources: U.S. Census Bureau TIGER/Line, 118th Congress districts (via civic-data-boundaries-us-cd118) and county boundaries.

2022–2024: Voters go to court. The League of Women Voters of Utah and Mormon Women for Ethical Government sued. In July 2024, the Utah Supreme Court ruled unanimously that when voters use an initiative to reform their government, the Legislature can’t simply repeal it. Lawmakers responded with an emergency session and put Amendment D on the ballot to override the ruling. The courts voided it before the election because its ballot language would have misled voters.

2025: The map falls. In August, Judge Dianna Gibson struck down the 2021 map, finding it diluted Salt Lake County voters by splitting them four ways. The Legislature passed a new map in October. In November, Judge Gibson rejected it too, finding it was drawn with the purpose of favoring Republicans, and adopted a map submitted by the plaintiffs instead. One legislator opened articles of impeachment against her. The state party chairman called it a judge “playing King from the bench.”

2026: The appeals run out. In February, the Utah Supreme Court dismissed the Legislature’s appeal because lawmakers had missed the 30-day deadline to file it, and a federal panel refused to block the new map. Meanwhile the state party ran a petition drive to repeal Prop 4 outright. It turned in more than 200,000 signatures, but thousands of signers asked to have their names removed, and the drive met the requirement in only 25 of the 26 Senate districts it needed. In November, Utah elected its first Democrat to Congress since 2020.

50.3%of Utah voters passed Prop 4 in 2018

4 waysSalt Lake County was split by the 2021 map

9%of Utahns think lawmakers alone should draw the maps

That last number comes from a poll by the conservative-leaning Sutherland Institute, which found that more than 90% of Utah voters want a commission involved in drawing maps. Opinion on Prop 4 itself is more mixed. Polls disagree, and many Utahns say they haven’t followed the fight closely. But almost nobody thinks politicians should draw their own districts with no check at all.

For seven years, the Legislature’s answer to a law the voters passed has been to amend it, ignore it, try to override it with an amendment, appeal it, and try to repeal it. You can believe the Legislature has a real constitutional role in redistricting, and I do, and still see that pattern for what it is. It’s the same thing I criticize in Washington: people in power changing the rules so voters can’t change who holds it.

But packing isn’t the answer either

Here’s the part both sides would rather skip.

The court’s map fixed the cracking by putting most of Salt Lake County into one district. That district is heavily Democratic. In November, the winner there took about 72% of the vote. That’s a packed district.

Now look at the statewide numbers. Since 2022, Utah’s House vote has swung harder toward Democrats than any other state’s. By the latest count, Republicans had about 478,000 votes in the four races and Democrats about 474,000, nearly a tie. Republicans still won three of the four seats. A reporter who ran this year’s precinct results through the old map found two Democratic wins, with all four races very close. He called it a thought experiment, and it is one. A wave year is not a normal year.

2022 and 2026 are shares of the two-party vote; 2026 is preliminary. Sources: Axios Salt Lake City, from state election results.

The lesson isn’t that the old map was secretly fair. In ordinary years, it turned about 37% of the vote into zero seats. The lesson is that a map can waste votes from either direction. Under the old map, Salt Lake County was cracked. Under the new one, a lot of its votes are piled up in one place. Neither one gives Utah a House delegation that looks like Utah.

That’s what the Framers were worried about. The House is supposed to reflect the people who elect it. When a third of a state’s voters get no seats, or half get a quarter of them, the mirror is bent, whoever is doing the bending.

My plan

1. Keep Prop 4 as the voters wrote it

The voters passed it. The courts have upheld their right to. I’d defend Prop 4 against repeal, and I’d restore the part SB 200 took out: the Legislature should have to take a public up-or-down vote on the commission’s maps and explain in writing any decision to reject them. If lawmakers think the commission got it wrong, they can say so in the open.

2. No cracking and no packing

Fair maps start with neutral rules: equal population, compact districts, and keeping cities and counties together where possible. Those rules matter. But they can pull against each other, and a map can follow them and still waste huge numbers of votes.

So I’d add one more test. Once a map is drawn, check it: over a range of recent elections, does each party’s share of seats roughly track its share of votes? Do any districts give real competition a chance? A map that turns 37% of the vote into nothing fails. So does a map that buries a community’s votes in one 72% district when a fairer layout was available. The commission should draw without looking at party data, then use these checks before anything is final.

3. One national rule, so nobody has to go first

Since 2019, federal courts have stayed out of this entirely. In Rucho v. Common Cause, the Supreme Court ruled 5–4 that partisan gerrymandering claims are political questions federal judges can’t decide. The Chief Justice noted that states and Congress can still act.

Since then, things have gotten worse. In 2025, the President pushed states to redraw their maps mid-decade, years before the next census, for political gain. Texas redrew to gain up to five seats. California answered with Prop 50 to gain up to five of its own. Missouri, North Carolina, and Ohio followed. Experts projected that Republicans could still come out about four seats ahead. Utah’s new map came from a court case that started years earlier, but it got swept into the same national fight.

This is an arms race, and every state that disarms alone gets punished. That’s why the fix for House maps has to be national. The Constitution’s Elections Clause gives Congress the power to “make or alter” the rules for congressional elections, and it already uses that power. Since 1967, federal law has required every state to elect its House members from single-member districts. I’d go one step further:

Ban partisan gerrymandering of congressional maps in every state, with clear standards courts can enforce.
Require independent commissions, or neutral rules with real teeth, for drawing House districts.
End mid-decade redistricting, except when a court orders a fix.

This covers only maps for the U.S. House, the people’s chamber. States would keep drawing their own legislative maps. On most election issues, I think states should lead. But Congress makes the rules for its own elections, and the Constitution says so.

4. Do it in the open

Every proposed map, the data behind it, and every public comment should be online. Any Utahn should be able to draw a map with free tools and submit it.

5. Leave judges alone for doing their jobs

I don’t have to agree with a ruling to defend the judge who made it. Threatening to impeach a judge because you lost a case is a way to scare the next judge, and that’s dangerous no matter who does it. If you think a judge got it wrong, appeal, on time.

What I won’t do

Cheer one side’s gerrymander because it helps my preferred candidates. Texas was wrong. California’s answer was understandable, and it was still wrong.
Defend a packed district just because it delivers a safe seat.
Let any party draw its own districts with no independent check.
Attack judges, or voters, for enforcing a law the people passed.

Questions people ask

Doesn’t the Utah Constitution give redistricting to the Legislature?

It does, and lawmakers should have a real role. But the Utah Constitution also says political power belongs to the people, who have the right to reform their government by initiative. The Utah Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the Legislature can’t simply undo that kind of reform. Lawmakers still get the final vote under Prop 4. They just can’t gerrymander.

Utah is a Republican state. Shouldn’t Republicans win every seat?

Utah is mostly Republican, but not entirely. In 2024, Republican House candidates won about 62.8% of the vote and 100% of the seats. More than a third of Utahns got no representation of their choice. A fair map wouldn’t guarantee anyone a seat. It would give every sizable group of voters a real shot at one.

Isn’t this just about electing a Democrat?

No. This paper argues that the map that elected a Democrat this year is packed, and may have cost Democrats a second seat. My test is the same no matter who it helps: maps should be drawn without party advantage, and the results should roughly match how Utah votes.

Why not just keep Salt Lake County whole?

Keeping communities together is a good rule, and it’s one of Prop 4’s standards. But Salt Lake County holds more than a third of Utahns, too many for a single district. Some part of it has to be joined with neighbors either way. The commission should decide which pieces go where based on real communities, then check that the result doesn’t waste votes.

Shouldn’t the states that gerrymander worst go first?

That’s exactly why a national rule is needed. No state wants to give up seats while others keep cheating. One law for every state means nobody has to go first.

The bottom line

The Framers built the House to be the part of government closest to the people. A map that cracks voters apart or packs them together quietly takes that away. Utahns have voted for fair maps, defended them in court, and refused to sign them away. Now it’s time for the people we elect to respect that, and for Congress to set the same fair rules for everyone.