ELECTIONS, POLITICS, & GOVERNMENT
Utah Foundation gives people a chance to try redrawing Utah’s congressional maps
Sep 26, 2025, 7:45 AM
Custom congressional district map created by Don Brinkerhoff on the Utah Foundation's website. (Don Brinkerhoff via utahfoundation.org)
(Don Brinkerhoff via utahfoundation.org)
SALT LAKE CITY — The Utah Legislature released five proposed congressional maps for public review this week. In response, the Utah Foundation has added a tool to its website that lets ordinary people try their hand at redrawing those maps.
Foundation President Shawn Teigen said they’re hoping to get more people to pay attention to the redistricting process going on right here in Utah.
“I think it’s important for people to understand this process. It’s been in the news a lot. People talk a lot about redistricting, particularly lately,” Teigen said. “They’ve been talking about Texas and they’ve been talking about California. Well, this is happening in our own backyard.”
Teigen said to play with the map, just get onto their website, click the tool, and start changing the districts.
“So you basically click on a county to cycle through each of the four districts until you kind of figure out which district…you think a [county] should be in. We give you a tally for each of those four districts. So you can see when you’re getting close to balancing out and getting kind of close to 850,000 people per district,” Teigen said. “It’s kind of like a game, [and] when you get there, you get rewarded with the green light and it shows that you’ve got success.”
He says once someone has achieved four balanced districts, they’re hoping that person will share it.
“What we would love for people to do with this when they do have success is for people to take a screenshot and then perhaps share that on social media and whatnot and talk a little bit about which principles that they kind of based their maps on,” Teigen said. “Please share it and please tag the Utah Foundation because we’d love to see what people are putting together when they’re putting their maps online.”
Teigen said they’re hoping people will gain a better appreciation for what the Redistricting Commission has had to go through.
“I think that’s one of the things that maybe is not appreciated as much by the public, is the fact that there are a bunch of different things that lawmakers are trying to consider. It has to be about the same number of people, but, ‘Oh we’re going to keep this community together? Or we’ve got natural geographic features?’ Or all those kinds of things,” Teigen said.
“You could perhaps argue that you’ve got candidates and congressional elected officials that are focused on multiple areas of the state,” he continued. “Some people would argue that doesn’t make a lot of sense and you should have these communities of interest where you have maybe more rural communities together, more urban communities together and perhaps split communities by either north and south or whatever the case may be.”
