Choosing Communities
In 2020, the Utah Foundation surveyed city officials to understand how they view their communities. One of the priorities of Utah’s redistricting commission was to keep together “communities of interest.” With that in mind, the Utah Foundation sought to better understand how city officials viewed their communities and which communities shared interests. To accomplish this, the Utah Foundation showed respondents a map of the state, asking them to select which four to six cities are most similar to their own.
Most city officials tended to choose nearby communities. This wasn’t always the case. Sometimes, similar communities were in other parts of the state. For example, one community in Iron County (which is in southwestern Utah) selected a community in Wasatch County (which is in north-central Utah). Another Iron County community selected a community in Uintah County (which is in central eastern Utah). A community in Salt Lake County selected a community in Washington County (which is in southwestern Utah).
Overall, officials usually identified with communities in counties that were the same size or smaller than their own. Rarely did an official identify with another community in a county that was substantially larger than their own.
Please note: Wasatch Front counties are Ogden, Davis, Salt Lake, and Utah.
To put it more succinctly, when city officials were asked to identify similar communities on a map, they sometimes chose communities smaller than their own, but rarely chose communities larger than their own.
Keep an eye out for three more posts looking at “Local Government Perspectives.”
About the Survey
The Utah Foundation sought to gain a deeper understanding of how local elected officials viewed the redistricting process. We sent out a survey to elected municipal officials (mayors and city council members). This survey was conducted by University of Utah students in collaboration with the Utah Foundation. There are about 250 cities, and more than 700 mayors and city council members. We received 96 respondents. The survey ran from October 23, 2020, to November 12, 2020.
What is Redistricting?
Redistricting is a process in which the government or a commission subdivides an area into different districts that will vote for their representative. Often, this focus is on state-drawn districts for members of the U.S. House of Representatives, but it also applies to state legislatures and state school board districts.
There are several general principles to consider in redistricting. One of the most important things is that each district has the same number of people. Contiguity (where all the parts of a district are connected) and compactness (tighter districts are generally considered better than sprawling ones) are also important considerations. There are several additional priorities, including preserving communities of interest, maintaining geographical or man-made boundaries, keeping the core of prior districts, minimizing the division of municipalities and counties, ensuring that boundaries align at different political levels, and prohibiting the purposeful favoring or disfavoring of a party, incumbent, or candidate.
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