Utah’s Constitution says that when there is a vacancy in the legislature, the Governor fills the vacancy from a list submitted by the committee of the political party that had last held the seat. The Republican committee that represents the 57th State House is voting on January 29 on whom to recommend to fill the vacancy.
The reason the 57th district seat is vacant is that the Republican elected on November 2, 2010, Craig A. Frank, was later determined not to live in that district. A mapping error had caused elections officials to assume that Cedar Hills is part of the 57th district, but it isn’t. Because Frank lived in that area, he was forced to resign his seat.
Residents of that enclave who are Republican delegates to the party committee were told that they cannot participate in the meeting to determine a new representative. They sued in state court, arguing that they must be permitted to participate, because they were all mistakenly barred from participating in the other district’s election in November 2010, because of the error. They said that they will have been barred from participating in both districts if they cannot get any relief. But, a court denied them relief. See this story.
These residents were all allowed to vote. Their votes were counted, and included in the official tally. There was no contest to the election within the 40 days allowed by state law. Then, the guy they elected voluntarily resigned. He will be replaced according to the process provided for in state law. No one was denied the right to vote. Yes, some people were given the wrong ballots but there is no way to “fix” that now. People need to deal with it and move on.
I think their complaint is that they were not permitted to vote in the actual district that they are in, so they had no input into the results of that election.
Richard Winger
Something like this happen in California. The United
States Government Census Block ended up in the wrong
county, viz., territory of San Barbara County was placed
in Ventura County by mistake.
Sincerely, Mark Seidenberg
Vice Chairman, American Independent Party
P.S. Also based in part of errors in district numbering
of Assembly District 1, not following the requirements of California Constitution for almost the last 9 years
California Assembly District # 1 is in the wrong place.
Let’s hope that 2012 will correct this error in district
numbering.
P.P.S. How did this so-called Mapping error happen?
One more chance for SCOTUS to bring down another Bush v. Gore HAMMER on the party hack MORONS in a State ???
See the 6 Cir opinion about provisional ballots being messed up by poll worker MORONS.
How much one person one vote in filling party hack vacancies ???
Both districts should hold new elections.
The article is misleading in that it talks of “5 census blocks”. The area was not subdivided at the time of the 2000 census, so the census blocks were not delineated by streets, but simply by visible and invisible features such as no-longer existent city limits, and the census blocks were large areas of vacant land.
The official map was drawn on some computer, clicking along the then city limits of Cedar Hills (as they were at the time the census bureau was defining its 2000 geometry).
After the area was annexed to Cedar Hills and subdivided, the old “census block” boundaries don’t correspond to the new streets, and in some cases split homes, so that if people rearrange their bedrooms, they could end up with different congressmen and legislators.
The Utah County election officials simply used the city limits of Cedar Hills as the district boundary and assigned all the voters in the new houses in the area to the districts that included most of Cedar Hills.
Curiously, Utah law has provisions for county election officials correcting district boundaries if the named features can’t be located, or areas are left out. These were intended when someone might say that the district went to a certain creek or some other visible feature.
The 2000 census geography has been obliterated in the area, and the 2010 census conducted using updated geography that follows actual streets. So it could be argued that the Utah County election officials can no longer locate Block Number 43728574339 (2000 vintage), and had implicitly modified the district boundaries to follow reality.
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Jim Riley
Thank you for the above. In California if a district line crosses a house, the resident can pick the district he or she wants by notification of the County Election Official.
Also, the real question in California is how many “flag
poles” and “checker boards” will be used to draw the District boundaries?
On February 21st I am planning to use this case as my
project in my GIS Class.
Sincerely, Mark Seidenberg
Vice Chairman, American Independent Party
The New Age gerrymander programs from gerrymander Hell are supposed to check for missing areas and duplicated areas.
NO lot lines in Utah ???
Annexed areas in Utah that cross lot lines ???
One more party hack mess for the courts to clean up ???
#8 If you go to the article that Richard mentioned, over on the left side is a link to the Utah legislature’s web site for district boundaries. I suspect this is a new application in anticipation of redistricting. When the map was being drawn in 2001, they probably didn’t have the integration of census data and satellite imagery.
Cedar Hills is just north of Provo and northeast of Utah Lake. Zoom in on the north end of HD district 57. The district boundary is where the city limits used to be. The subdivision goes beyond that.
Since you are taking a GIS class, you can figure out how to get the block layout as it existed in 2000, and as it exists for the 2010 census.
Utah doesn’t appear to put the census geography defining the districts into statute, but rather the legislature simply approves a “map”, which is kept in the Lt.Governor’s office. Apparently what happened was they intended the district to go up the city limits, which were in the process of being changed in 2000 – they might have actually been changed by the time the districts were being drawn in 2001.
#8 If there were chessboard districts, would the use of bishops to connect them violate the separation of church and state?
#9 Census geography might not follow property boundaries, since they aren’t visible, and a census taker might not be able to follow them.
I don’t know whether city boundaries have to follow property boundaries in Utah. They don’t in Texas. A city could simply send a tax bill based on pro-rated area shares of the property. If there is a murder, the county coroner chalks the outline of the body, and the county surveyor marks the city limits, just like buried utility lines are marked. The case then gets assigned to the police or sheriff’s department for investigation.
In an area that is being subdivided, there is nothing to prevent a replatting, which is what appears to have happened here.
# 11 How about a chessboard Knight jumping from district to district ???
How many gerrymander districts have those point connections between the parts ???
The mandate for the District Revision Board plainly states that existing City & County boundaries are to be
used as far as possible absolutely eliminates the use of any checkerboards or flagpoles that don’t already exist which in actual fact is VERY few throughout the entire State. Granted, many cities do have amoeba-like appendages but those are well-known to the residents. With the small number of Districts that will be drawn compared to other States in the Union, there really isn’t that much to fight over. Many boundaries will be self-evident once the population figures are released in February. As stated previously Los Angeles, Orange and San Diego Counties being the most populous will be where the potential for interesting combinations of city and unincorporated territory will be highest. It is obvious that the Cities of Los Angeles, San Diego, San Jose and the City and County of San Francisco will be scattered across multiple Districts. Their history should be a guide for the District lines.
To Mark Seidenberg: Just out of curiosity which University are you attending for your GIS class?