My family’s farm in the Uinta Basin is just north of Roosevelt, Utah, yet it is in a separate voting district, because Roosevelt and Duchesne in Duchesne County, Utah were Gerrymandered into voting with Carbon County, on the other side of a mountain range. Why? Because Carbon County has a majority of Democratic voters and Duchesne County has a majority of Republican voters!
Redistricting is an opportunity to ensure that voters are evenly distributed in districts in which voters can chose a candidate to truly represent a majority of the people.
Redistricting by legislatures will always be done to bias voting to ensure that the political party in power will remain in power. It is a complex game of redistributing voters into bizarrely incongruous puzzle piece districts, crossing mountain ranges and dissecting valleys, ultimately ensuring that no voters remain in a district which can vote in someone to adequately represent them in legislation which will effect every aspect of their lives.
Near our farm home the redistricting line dramatically squiggles down around an area with residences, carefully excluding or including them for some political reason, placing neighbors in this small rural community in different voting districts.
Only when we amend state and federal constitutions to require unbias redistricting commissions independent of all political incentives will we truly have a government where each individual can hope to have their needs, hopes, and dreams represented in their government Of, By, and For The People.
Laird
