The public weighs in on potential Utah district maps 

Utah’s newly proposed district maps were announced on Sept. 24 and then put online for public comment.  The website allows the user to submit their own map, which would be subject to comment.   

Map option C, one of five proposed maps by the Republican-controlled Utah legislature, had 716 comments, hundreds more than the other proposed maps. 

Option C only cuts Salt Lake County into two, instead of the previous map that cuts it into fourths. This map features two medium-sized districts: a northern district and a central district that encompasses Tooele County.  It also includes two geographically larger districts: a Western and an Eastern district. 

It splits three municipalities, including Millcreek, North Salt Lake, and Pleasant Grove. It also splits three counties, including Davis, Salt Lake, and Utah 

Each map has an option to comment that allows the public to highlight their comment as opinion, negative, or positive. It highlights the negative ones as red, the positive ones as green, and the opinion ones as yellow 

Many of the comments were negative about Option C, while a smaller share of the comments were positive. 

One commenter, Amber Evans, wrote, “While this map is not terrible, it is a far cry from the Escamilla_Owens Map. This map splits communities in ways that is clearly at a disadvantage to marginalized communities. I vote NO on this map.” 

Proposition four has multiple requirements for each district, including that they have an equal population and that they minimize municipal (city) and county splits.  They also need to be compact while preserving traditional neighborhoods and providing easy transportation.   

Mike Curtis, managing associate general counsel to the legislature, said, “The requirement is not to get to the absolute bare minimum on one standard at the expense of the rest of the standards,” and “there is some give and take when you evaluate all seven subsections together.” 

A sixth map proposed by two democrats, State Senate Minority Leader Luz Escamilla and State Rep. Doug Owens, presented a map called the Escamilla-Owens map. It splits Salt Lake County into two districts, with the bottom district including some of Utah County. 

There are two compact central districts and two larger northern and southern districts. 

Compared to Option C, it includes more cuts in communities, according to a count of four counties and 13 municipalities that are divided.   

There were 640 comments on the Escamilla-Owens map. A significant number of comments left on this map were positive, with relatively few negative comments. 

Although this map has had significantly more positive reception than Option C, on the website, one commenter, Brad Christensen, wrote, “This is by far the most partisan of all the committee maps. The whole point of better boundaries was to NOT take into consideration partisan information.” 

To post a comment or map, visit citygate.utleg.gov