Morning Digest: Utah's top court opens door for fairer maps—but not this year

The Morning Digest is compiled by David Nir, Jeff Singer, and Stephen Wolf, with additional contributions from the Daily Kos Elections team.

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Leading Off

● UT Redistricting: The Utah Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that state lawmakers acted improperly when they gutted a measure to reform redistricting that voters adopted at the ballot box in 2018. However, the court's inexplicable yearlong delay in issuing a decision ensures that the Beehive State's congressional map will remain unchanged for the November elections, and it still does not guarantee that new boundaries will be in place next cycle.

Six years ago, voters narrowly approved Proposition 4, a measure Democrats hoped would prevent Republicans from passing a new congressional gerrymander that would make all four of Utah's seats safely red. Proposition 4 required that new congressional and legislative maps follow several rules, including that boundaries couldn’t unduly favor or disfavor any particular party or candidate on purpose, and must minimize the number of divided counties and municipalities.