The fight for control of Congress ahead of the 2026 midterms has in large part taken place beyond the campaign trail. Democrats and Republicans have turned to redistricting — in what some have dubbed “the gerrymandering wars” — to vie for control of the House. The states where each party has gained seats is mostly expected: Democrat-controlled California drew more Democrat-friendly districts, while Republican-controlled Texas drew more Republican-friendly districts. One state, however, notably reversed this trend. Utah, one of the reddest states in the country, flipped a solid Republican seat into a solid Democratic one. What led Utah to redistrict this way?
The short answer is this: Anti-gerrymandering legislation initiated by voters led to a judge throwing out Utah’s previous map for unfairly favoring Republicans, and ultimately implementing one with a safe blue district centered on Salt Lake County. The history of this anti-gerrymandering legislation, however, is long and unlikely, and Judge Dianna Gibson’s decision represents the culmination of a nearly decade-long fight for fair maps in Utah. As much as that fight is a story of success against the odds, it also speaks to the difficulty and rising resistance to citizen initiatives.
In 2017, a group of Utahns founded Better Boundaries, a bipartisan organization promoting fair redistricting practices in Utah. In 2018, the organization pushed forward a citizen ballot initiative called the Utah Independent Redistricting Commission and Standards Act, more commonly known as Proposition 4, or “Prop. 4.” The proposal sought to institute an independent redistricting commission to draw and submit maps to the state Legislature for approval. To prevent gerrymandering, the commission would be composed of non-partisan experts bound to particular redistricting standards, and the state Legislature would need to publicly justify any alterations to the commission’s maps.
Prop. 4 passed in 2018 by less than one percentage point, backed by groups like the ACLU and opposed by figures like former Utah Senate Majority Leader Ralph Okerlund. Like other ballot initiatives in Utah, the campaign featured significant out-of-state funding, alongside a large volunteer effort. Such measures were necessary because statewide initiative petitions must meet particularly difficult criteria to land on the ballot in the first place, requiring signatures from 8% of registered voters not just statewide, but in at least 26 out of 29 state Senate districts. As Robert Gehrke, a Salt Lake Tribune reporter who has covered politics for over 20 years, told the HPR, signature gathering requires, “a couple million dollars at least,” on top of volunteer organizing. “With the Senate district requirements, you’ve got to have people going out and doing that, and that’s really expensive, and it’s gotten more expensive.”
Despite costly effort, Prop. 4 did not remain on the books for the 2020 redistricting process. In the 2020 legislative session, Utah’s Legislature repealed and replaced Prop. 4 with a bill that reenabled gerrymandering. S.B. 200 Redistricting Amendments reduced the redistricting commission to an advisory role and gave the Legislature the ability to draw and enact its own maps — rendering the commission practically useless. Bryan Schott, founder of independent outlet Utah Political Watch, told the HPR that “the Legislature pretty much made it clear from the moment [Prop. 4] passed that they wanted to change the system.”
Prop. 4 was not the only initiative that fell victim to this fate. Schott added, “There were two other initiatives passed that year: one that expanded Medicaid, one that legalized medical cannabis. And both of those initiatives were also drastically altered. And the Legislature made it clear that that’s what they were going to do from the moment they passed.” With the Legislature following its own rules rather than those created by the initiative process, it drew its own, gerrymandered map.
In 2022, opponents of gerrymandering responded. The League of Women Voters of Utah and Mormon Women for Ethical Government sued the Legislature, claiming it had violated Utah’s constitution by altering a citizen initiative. The lawsuit went to Utah’s Supreme Court. “It seemed like the litigation was very uncertain, and the Supreme Court could have gone either way,” said Gehrke about the case. “But the expectations, I think, from a lot of people were that it was going to be a slog. No better than a coin toss.”
Prop. 4’s future was uncertain until 2024, when the court issued its opinion, unanimously agreeing that the Legislature had infringed on Utahns’ constitutional rights with S.B. 200. As Gehrke put it, the opinion “was a bombshell in some ways because obviously it changed the entire course of Prop. 4.” In a little over a year, this decision led to Prop. 4 being declared the law on redistricting, and a state court ordered a new, Prop. 4-compliant district plan to be drawn. The Legislature passed a remedial map — however, the court ruled that this map was still structured to favor Republicans and failed to comply with Prop. 4, and instead implemented the plaintiff-drawn map that is being used for this year’s midterms.
The over three-year legal battle to ensure Prop. 4’s proper implementation was not without cost — both in terms of the resources needed by activists to fight in the court system, and of the political aftermath. “The litigation has been, I’m sure, millions of dollars because we know the Legislature spent about $2 million defending it,” says Gehrke. “We don’t know how much the plaintiffs have spent… but it’s easily millions, easily because they’ve also had some of the top attorneys in town. Dave Bryman has been on that case from the beginning, and he is not cheap.”
Meanwhile, the Legislature has made changes to both ballot initiatives and the courts since the ruling, including expanding the state Supreme Court and putting an amendment on the ballot raising the voting threshold to 60% for initiatives that would increase taxes. As Schott describes the proposal, “It’s written so broadly that pretty much anything could be construed as raising taxes.” In an interview with the HPR, Katie Wright, the director of Better Boundaries from 2021 to 2025, criticized the Legislature’s changes to the Supreme Court: “Utah had a very recognized merit-based process for appointing Utah Supreme Court justices. That process no longer exists.” Wright added that the process is now “infused with partisanship,” which she describes as “a huge risk, I think, for fairness in Utah.”
Furthermore, the Legislature created a new “Constitutional Court” that would allow the attorney general, governor, or Legislature to reassign cases against state actors to a special three-judge panel. Some argue that this gives the state actors a unique advantage in those cases. “Those were all done in reaction to the Legislature losing court battles over these ballot initiatives,” says Schott on the changes to the judiciary. “They did it because they’re bound and determined that they do not want ballot initiatives setting any policy for the state. In the past, they were able to, as they did with Prop. 4, completely repeal it and replace it with something else. And when the Supreme Court says you overstepped your constitutional authority, they decided that they needed to stack the deck so that would never happen again.”
Despite being rebuked by the courts, the Legislature’s Republican supermajority was not finished fighting Prop. 4. The state GOP launched an initiative campaign of their own to repeal the anti-gerrymandering legislation, backed by millions of dollars in funding and support from prominent national Republicans, including the President. While the petition initially reached the necessary threshold to land on the ballot, a targeted removal campaign led by groups such as Better Boundaries used the stringent Senate district requirement to their advantage, convincing thousands of voters in key districts to remove their signatures. The Legislature even struck against this countercampaign in the final 90 minutes of the legislative session by altering an election bill and limiting methods for signature removal. Regardless, the repeal initiative failed, and Prop. 4 remains on the books for at least a little longer.
Despite the copious resources and effort poured into advancing Prop. 4, the measure remains only partially implemented in Utah. “It has been an enormous effort, and it has been carrying over for now nine years to get the will of the people implemented. And we still are not there,” says Wright. “We have a congressional map that meets the voter standards of Prop. 4, but our state House and our state Senate maps are still not in compliance.”
With the kind of effort it takes for a ballot initiative to succeed, the question arises of whether it’s a worthwhile use of resources. But for policies like Prop. 4, it’s typically the only route possible. When asked if an anti-gerrymandering could have succeeded in the Legislature, Gehrke, Schott, and Wright all responded with a resounding no. Speaking on Prop. 4 and two other initiatives that passed that same year, Gehrke said, “There had been bills to do those exact same things. The public polling showed that voters were in favor of it, but they could never get it through the Legislature … They got it on the ballot. It took a lot of money and a lot of effort, and voters approved all three … It was the only avenue left.” As Wright puts it, “It’s been a Herculean effort … But it’s also been successful.”
It’s already alarming when popular policy must go through a high-cost process to become law. It is far more alarming when lawmakers seek to negate that process, and then raise the barriers for it even further. “It’s abundantly clear that the Republican supermajority in the state does not want ballot initiatives or do not want ballot initiatives to be a way to get laws passed,” says Schott. “They think that they should be the ones to pass the laws and not have any of this done through ballot initiative.”
In a republican system like that of the U.S., the government is meant to act on the behalf of the people. But when it fails to do so, the people must have a viable avenue to decisively hold lawmakers accountable and enact the policies they demand. As gerrymandering becomes more prominent, compromising the ability for elections to keep officeholders in line, it becomes increasingly important to defend ballot initiatives and to reduce barriers to direct democracy. Wright highlights that while Better Boundaries was initially founded with a singular focus on fair redistricting, “the organization has now expanded its mission to include protecting our right to ballot initiative.” Since “lawmakers have made it near impossible to actuate that right, and they are again putting another assault on it on our ballot in November,” says Wright, “it’s really important that folks involved in this work work to protect that right to ballot initiative, so that again the people can hold their government [accountable] and check the power of their legislatures when they fail to act.”
The story of Prop. 4 has much deeper consequences than adding a Democrat to the U.S. House in 2026. The consequences of the initiative and the Legislature’s retaliation to it have put Utahns’ right to ballot initiatives at risk, and the future of direct democracy and government accountability hangs in the balance. If the Legislature successfully shuts down Prop. 4 and any future initiatives, it sends the message that it exists to serve itself — not its citizens. This is not only because it would be directly rejecting the will of the people as expressed in 2018, but also because it would be enabling itself to gerrymander so that lawmakers can choose their voters, not the other way around.
Utah isn’t alone in this fight either, as other states, including North Dakota, South Dakota, Missouri, and Florida, have seen lawmakers attacking ballot initiatives in recent years. As groups are emerging around the country that seek to defend democratic principles via campaigns for fair election districts and protections for citizen ballot initiatives among other means, Prop. 4’s history tells us the fight will be a costly but worthwhile affair.
