Republicans are ‘cracking and packing’ voters to secure minority rule | David Daley

This partisan free-for-all could perpetuate Republican minority rule in Congress and state legislatures for the next decade - if not longer

Salt Lake is the largest county in Utah, containing not only the state's capital, Salt Lake City, but 40% of the state's population. While Donald Trump carried the safely conservative state, Joe Biden defeated him in Salt Lake county, soundly, by 53% to 42.1%. Two different Democrats have captured a competitive congressional seat there over the last decade, most recently Ben McAdams, who defeated the incumbent Mia Love by fewer than 700 votes in 2018, then lost by less than a percentage point to Burgess Owens in 2020.

Don't expect a tight rematch next year. Utah's new congressional map, approved by the state legislature this week, divides Salt Lake county into four pieces, attaching pieces to conservative rural counties hundreds of miles away. It ignores the recommendation of an independent commission established by initiative in 2018, and scatters voters here across four districts so uncompetitive and safely Republican that the non-partisan Princeton Gerrymandering Project graded it an F.

David Daley is the author of Ratf**ked: Why Your Vote Doesn't Count and Unrigged: How Americans Are Battling Back to Save Democracy. He is a senior fellow at FairVote