Utah lawmakers struggle with drawing new congressional district maps
Oct 3, 2025, 8:00 AM | Updated: 6:28 pm
Utah Sen. Dan Thatcher, Forward Party of Utah, shows the population numbers of each district as he unveils details of a congressional map of his authorship during a press conference at the Utah Capitol in Salt Lake City on Wednesday, Sept. 17, 2025. (Tess Crowley/Deseret News)
(Tess Crowley/Deseret News)
SALT LAKE CITY — In less than a week, Utah lawmakers will need to come together with a new congressional district map, but state lawmakers are still working to find some common ground.
Related: Utahns invited to view an evaluation of the six proposed congressional maps
The struggle with ambiguity
Lawmakers are still disagreeing on what that map should look like, but they are agreeing that some of the standards are ambiguous, and that complicates things.
“There’s been a lot of interpretations made by the majority in terms of what those criteria are. That aren’t necessarily defined per se,” said Democratic State Senator Luz Escamilla.
Republican State Senator Todd Weiler is not worried about the ambiguity.
“I’m confident she’ll [Escamilla] find it does because all of those maps were drawn by experts who were given the … standards and said ‘please adhere to these standards,” said Senator Weiler.
2018 standards
Both sides say they are working around the clock to make sure each proposed map meets all standards set by Utah voters in 2018.
Senator Escamilla told KSL Inside Sources their proposed map follows the proper guidelines and is based on the map submitted by the independent committee back in 2018.
“I believe that the democratic proposal follows really the intent of Prop 4. And Prop 4 was brought by people for the people. This was not legislation from the legislature.”
But Senator Weiler says it actually doesn’t follow the rule about keeping cities and counties together.
“Their map splits 13 cities and five counties. The five other maps they split like two to three counties and two to three cities.”
Some public commenters and lawmakers are claiming the other maps presented by Republicans purposely split up Salt Lake City to dilute the democratic majority in the area.
