September 2025 with Rep. Melissa Ballard

CHECKING IN AT THE LEGISLATURE:
SEPTEMBER 2025

Dear Friends and Neighbors,

This has been a busy and difficult month. We’ve tackled tough issues in the Utah House, such as redistricting, and we had a political assassination at UVU, which has left our state shaken. And a mass shooting in Michigan at an LDS stake center leaves us all concerned about the overheated political violence we are seeing. 

During this trying time, I hope we can come together as Americans, and especially, as Utahns. Respect, empathy, and collaboration across the political spectrum is what makes Utah such a great place to live. 

President Russell M. Nelson, prophet for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also passed away this month at the age of 101. If you want to view his last public address, click here.

QUICK LINKS

IN THIS ISSUE

  1. Redistricting and Approving New Congressional Maps by Oct. 6th
  2. Sen. Todd Weiler on "Brammer's Bill" and Redistricting
  3. UDOT visits NSL to discuss Legacy Highway Expansion and Options for Sound Walls
Redistricting and Approving New Congressional Maps by Oct. 6th

The Utah Legislature recently released the options for Utah's congressional maps. Proposition 4 requires that maps must account for:

  • Population deviation
  • Minimizing the division of municipalities and counties
  • Compactness, contiguity, and ease of transportation
  • Preserving neighborhoods and communities of interest
  • Following natural geography and boundaries
  • Maximizing alignment across different types of districts
Additionally, maps are prohibited from unduly favoring or disfavoring political parties or incumbents. Beyond these requirements, the Legislative Redistricting Committee has also prioritized balancing rural and urban areas, military installations, institutions of higher education, and federal lands in each district. In compliance with a court order and current law, the Legislature is prohibited from using partisan political data, such as election results, party affiliation, or incumbent information, while creating the maps. The public is invited to view and comment on several proposed map options through October 5. The committee will then meet on October 6 to recommend a map for the full Legislature to consider in a special session that same day. 
To provide a clear standard for fairness, the Legislature has introduced the Partisan Symmetry Bill. This bill was developed in response to a judge's order, which noted Proposition 4's language was "general" and invited the Legislature to establish more specific judicial standards. Partisan symmetry is defined as both major parties having an equal opportunity to win seats based on the votes they receive. To measure this, the bill employs a Partisan Bias Test, which uses hypothetical elections to detect if district lines give one party an unfair advantage or utilize practices like "packing" and "cracking". The goal of the bill is to ensure fairness, create an objective standard for maps, and reduce the likelihood of legal disputes.

Please take a moment to get involved at redistricting.utah.gov. 
Sen. Todd Weiler on "Brammer's Bill" and Redistricting
To explain “Brammer’s Bill” which we will be voting on during the special session, the Utah Senator representing our area is Todd Weiler. Here’s his description as to why this bill is fair:

“Prop 4’s text ties “partisan symmetry” (or at least “no undue favoritism”) into its bundle of neutral redistricting constraints, and mandates that statistical or scientific tools (including “measures of partisan symmetry”) be used.

However, Prop 4 does not in its text define which measure(s) of partisan symmetry must be used, or precisely how “undue favor” is to be quantified or tested.

How do you propose that we ensure that one political party doesn’t get an unfair advantage?  

Partisan symmetry is not defined in Prop 4 and Judge Gibson invited the legislature to define it — which is what Senator Brammer is doing. 

Brammer’s bill takes one method that political scientists have used since the 1950s - the seat-vote curve - and applies it to Utah’s maps. The premise is if one party gets 50 percent of the vote, it should get roughly 50 percent of the seats. If the curve tilts so that one party must clear 55 or 60 percent just to win a majority, that’s bias - plain and quantifiable.

This is not an invention from the Utah Legislature. It’s the same test used in Gill v. Whitford (2017), the Wisconsin case that nearly set a national standard for partisan gerrymandering. Courts from Pennsylvania to North Carolina have leaned on similar analyses to strike down rigged maps.

I understand that his amended bill will add two more tests for a total of three tests. 

Utah voters banned “undue partisan favoritism” in Prop 4, but Prop 4 lacked any definition or procedure as to how to do that. Without a metric, “undue favoritism” is in the eye of the beholder - which is confusing and ambiguous. 

Last month in court, the League of Women Voters in court said that the legislature needs to define a workable standard. Brammer’s bill does exactly that. 

By simulating small vote shifts, the test separates natural clustering (Democrats in Salt Lake City) from an engineered bias. It requires public disclosure of the data, the code, and the methodology. No backroom math - anyone can audit it.

 This bill also provides the courts with a neutral yardstick to review. Past statewide elections show that Utah is a 70-30 state. Neutrality means neither party should get more than their nature share. 

Brammer’s bill is not perfect, but it is fair, transparent, and defensible. It puts Utah ahead of the national curve by moving redistricting out of the shadows and into the sunlight of empirical evidence.

If we’re serious about restoring trust in elections, this is the type of standard we should adopt. Utah can either keep fighting over maps in court, or we can measure fairness, show our work, and move on.”
Details about UDOT’s Expansion of Legacy Highway

We had many in our community come to UDOT’s open house to learn more about the plans to expand Legacy Highway by 2 more lanes in each direction.

Legacy Highway expansion has been planned since the 1980s. It is the only stretch of highway in the entire state with “quiet asphalt,” and the new lanes will also be paved with quiet asphalt. By completing the 2026 expansion in less than a year, it will save Utah taxpayers between $300-400 million. 

UDOT is required not to extend commuters’ drive by more than 15 min when construction is going on. The cost of adding the additional 4 lanes to Legacy in the center of the existing lanes will be $70 mill paid in cash. For comparison, the West Davis Corridor cost $700 million because it did not have the decades of planning behind it like Legacy, requiring UDOT to purchase additional properties and easements for its construction.

Many residents have concerns about the noise coming from the Legacy Highway. Homes directly adjacent to Legacy will have the option to vote for a sound wall in their area. The wall would reduce noise for the immediate home next to it, but not for any other homes. This vote requires a high threshold of support from each neighboring section of 75% of voter turnout, and 75% of property owners voting in favor of a sound wall. 

The questions at the open house posed by our WX and NSL neighbors were: Would you rather have a sound wall and have more privacy from the road traffic, or would you rather have the view of the mountains and wetlands? Those are good questions for neighbors to decide.
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Paid for by the Committee to Elect Melissa Garff Ballard

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