What Redistricting Looks Like In Every State

On Nov. 12, Gov. Spencer Cox signed Utah’s new congressional map into law. The plan, drawn by Republicans in the state legislature, splits Democrats who live in the Salt Lake City metro area between all four of the state’s congressional districts, a practice known as “cracking.” As a result, all four districts will be safely Republican; the current 4th District, which has been marginally competitive at R+15, moves all the way to R+31.

The map disregards the recommendations of Utah’s independent redistricting commission, which was created by a 2018 ballot measure. In October, the commission presented three possible congressional maps to the legislature that all would have created three Republican-leaning seats and one Democratic-leaning seat centered on Salt Lake City. But after the legislature watered down the ballot measure in 2020, the legislature was no longer under any obligation to consider the commission’s maps, and it drew its own instead.

Democrats have cried gerrymandering over the new map, and on March 17, a coalition of voters and voting-rights groups filed a lawsuit alleging it is an illegal partisan gerrymander. The lawsuit also lobbies for the reinstatement of the stronger anti-gerrymandering protections from the 2018 ballot measure before the legislature intervened.