Utah Redistricting:
It is still early. I hope we can follow county and city lines where possible. In some cases, that won't work because of numbers. The Congressional Districts will likely be even population wise within 1 person. They have agreed to be within 0.1%. The Rest of the districts (House, Senate, State School Board) will be within 3.5% of the equal population target.
The question is, if you start from scratch, and you like who is representing you, would you be upset to find out they won't be, and you will have two other incumbents vying for your vote? You could end up with no incumbents with everyone new vying for the seat.
Either you start from scratch going with new boundaries, or you keep as many districts as you can and make them larger or smaller to match the population targets. Doing that will totally eliminate some districts. In the past they have kept as many existing districts as possible. What do you want this time?
Your opinion maters. The census numbers will drive the final boundaries. Sometimes that means the person across the street will be voting for someone different than their neighbors.
A few of the lines will not make sense, even if the maps start from scratch - due to fact the US Census Blocks (the smallest pieces in the puzzles) are in shapes that don't make sense and have populations from 0 to over 1000.
So, should we start from scratch, following county and city lines where possible, or keep as may existing districts in place as possible?
For more information, see:
http://www.redistrictutah.com/
My previous post on Utah Redistricting:
http://fredcox4utah.blogspot.com/2011/05/utah-redistricting-not-as-easy-as-it.html