Former Governor Olene Walker Calls for End to Gerrymandering!
Salt Lake Tribune Op-Ed Piece
by Olene Walker
Former Utah Governor
Did you know that gerrymandering is permitted in Utah in this day and age? What is gerrymandering, you ask?
Gerrymandering is the manipulation of election districts by legislators for political advantage. It has occurred in our country since 1812 when Elbridge Gerry created a redistricting plan for Republicans to keep a Massachusetts Senate seat from Federalist hands. The resulting legislative district map looked like a salamander.
There are fair minded Republicans, but they don’t last long. Former Governor Olene Walker is a ‘former’ governor because she is a woman and too thoughtful and fair in her approach to politics for the right wingers of her party. She has been willing to speak out for fairness on numerous occasions and now she is calling for fairness in establishing Congressional Districts.
The unfair Republicans have rigged and gerrymandered the state in an atrocious manner in a vain effort to keep Democrats from being elected. She is simply asking for fairness and rational thought, rare commodities in her party. Great people like Olene Walker are a credit to politics. Oh that there were more like her!
In Utah, we have legislative districts that divide cities in half, right down Main Streets in Moab and Randolph.
We have Tooele County splintered three ways to fill the legislative districts of distant incumbents from other counties.
North Salt Lake has an appendage called Rose Park whose residents are served by a state legislator in Davis County.
Park City was split to prevent any representation by the minority party.
More examples abound on the Web site www.fairboundaries.org, which shows the outcome when elected legislators can draw their own election boundaries, and consequently pick their own voters — right down to home addresses and LDS ward boundaries. The ripple effect for those less senior legislators means far-flung constituencies and geographic hurdles for public service.
Why should you care?
You should care because gerrymandered lines are drawn which clear-cut through cities, ignore county boundaries, jump rivers and streams, ignore mountain ranges, in order to assist legislators in re-election bids or to freeze out newcomers. This, unfortunately, perpetuates a 90 percent re-election rate for legislators and diminishes your importance as a citizen and a voter.
Under federal law, legislative districts must be basically equal in population within a certain percentage, but it is clear that communities and neighborhoods could have been left intact far better than they are on the current gerrymandered maps we have.
Granted, Utah’s constitution broadly grants authority to the Legislature which “shall divide the state into congressional, legislative, and other districts accordingly.” However, no other constitutional or statutory guidance is provided to our state legislators on how redistricting is to be done. With such an open door to abuse this power, legislators fall prey to human nature and self-preservation.
For example, other state constitutions require that anti-gerrymandering provisions be utilized: 37 state constitutions require contiguous borders; 24 require compact groupings, 30 require equalized populations, 20 require respect for political boundaries, and now six even require convenient distances so legislators can travel easily to meet their electors.
Of the 34 state constitutions that allocate redistricting authority to legislators, 16 provide some form of an independent redistricting commission. Many states have detailed statutory protections in state code. Utah has nothing to stop redistricting abuses except your reliance on legislators’ promises to “trust them” again for another decade.
The initiative, “Utah Redistricting Standards Commission,” was created by grass-roots citizen/patriots from both sides of the aisle to provide neutral standards and procedures for the drawing of the initial maps to be recommended to the Legislature. All the criteria mentioned in other state constitutions are included.
As a former Utah governor, lieutenant governor, state legislator, educator and businesswoman, I implore you to support this initiative. As a wife, mother and grandmother and a resident of St. George, I ask you to sign the petition.
Sign the petition, either in person or on-line so that the anti-gerrymandering measure will be on the November ballot.
Olene Walker is former governor of Utah.