I say give DC a representative and let them vote for senator in Maryland. I don't think they'll ever get two senators for themselves.

Maryland doesn't want DC back.  The District is horribly governed, high crime, terrible public schools, etc.  

While it is true that no representation is much worse than under representation, as a Utahn I still think it was lame to exclude the missionaries when counting.

Plus, I really think we can pick up 2 seats with this plan rather than 1 seat if we just give DC its vote next year.  

1.  Huntsman's, no question.  Under the '01 plan, Matheson could be in trouble.  Huntsman's plan gives Matheson a safe seat; anything combining north Salt Lake County with Summit County (Park City) is a district a Dem can win.  The other three seats are unlikely to go Dem, but whatever.

2.  Mostly due to natural increase, but there are some out-of-staters moving in.  I read that by 2030 Mormons will no longer constitute a majority in Utah, not just because of the newcomers but because of the Mormons who leave the church.

3.  As safe as a House seat in Utah can be.

4.  No idea.

As to 4,

Rocky wants to take on a job running an international advocacy organization on Global Warming or Human Rights.  He's got the credentials to do either quite well.

According to the Almanac of American Politics: "Redistricting in 2002 raised George W. Bush's 2000 percentage in the [2nd] district from 57% to 67% and made it the strongest Bush district held by a Democrat outside of Texas."

The 2001 map I talked about is one that never came into being because UT lost its SCOTUS case because it called for 4 seats.    

To your other questions:

1. The Huntsman map is much more favorable to Democrats because it makes Matheson safe or at least one Democratic seat safe.  Matheson and a moderate Utah Democrat could take two seats under this plan.

2. Our growth is a little bit of both.  Salt Lake County is growing more and more cosmopolitan, but LDS families still have lots of babies.  Keep in mind, many people who move into Utah are also LDS.  However there is a significant chunck of people that move to Utah for other reasons, including their love of Utah's natural beauty (aka environmentalists).

3. Yes, Salt Lake County goes over 60% for Jim, and the parts in the Huntsman map include all of the Avenues, West Valley, Magna, Rose Park, and North Salt Lake--Democratic strongholds.  Summit County is home of Park City and the Sundance Film Festival (as well as where most out of staters move).  

4. Rocky Anderson is not running for reelection because he is unpopular and would probably lose reelection.  While he has done some great things in terms of Koyto, he is very antagonistic and terrible to his staff.  The surest way for an issue to lose at the state legislature is to have Rocky advocate it.

they tried to redistrict Matheson out of his seat in 2002. his district used to be centered around Salt Lake City, now it contains a lot of eastern Utah.

NC would not lose a seat.  This is not rehashing the 2001 SCOTUS arguments.  What this would do is add two seats to the House -- one for DC, and, correspondingly, seat #436 in Utah (as a compromise to make this more palatable to Republicans.)

I'm going to go out on a limb and say you won't need to worry about kicking Taylor out through redistricting...

Excellent idea!  Virginia plus the Gore states makes -- President Edwards in 2009!

Exactly.  There is no way you could convince me (and I'm guessing most Washingtonians) to vote for either of our neighboring states.  We are not Virginia. And we're definitely not Maryland. We deserve our own vote for our own representatives.

It's sadly because they are so reliably democratic.

The Republicans will never agree to add another state they have no chance of winning.

Not unless they get something in return I guess.  Annex Alberta or something.

Racism, plain and simple.  DC is 60% black, and another 8% or so Hispanic.  No state has anything close to a black majority.  The NAACP and other groups have gotten on board pushing for DC voting rights as a civil rights issue.  Jack Kemp made comments supporting the Davis bill at the MLK Memorial ceremony in DC recently.

Actually, the history of admitting states (thus changing the partisan composition of Congress) has always been a very partisan undertaking.  Witness the Missouri Compromise which for 30 years admitted free and slave states in pairs.  I researched this in an effort to determine whether the previous DC push, the Norton/Lieberman No Taxation Without Representation Act, would be constitutional, and what kind of vote in Congress and what kind of approval from the president--if any--is required to admit a new state.  So while Congress is in Republican hands, you could argue that it's simply a partisan matter of not wanting to add a Democrat to the House and two to the Senate.  When Democrats are in charge, they lack such an excuse.

Personally, I don't believe in statehood for DC, but I do believe in full congressional representation for it.  The tactical irony is that it would be easier to admit DC as a state (which the House voted on in 1993 and rejected) than to ratify a constitutional amendment giving it full congressional representation despite not being a state (which was tried in the 70s and died in the states).

I think that until DC has full representation in Congress, DC voters should be allowed to vote for members of Congress in any state or district in the country, as long as they only vote once per election.  Imagine if we voted as a bloc, we could swing some major races each cycle!

-Fun fact: Lyndon Johnson pushed DC representation when he was president.  Back then, with more people in DC and fewer in the nation, DC would've been entitled to two House seats.

I recently suggested to several DC council members and incoming Mayor Adrian Fenty that because DC is really a hybrid of a city and a state, it should rename its mayor Governor and its council the DC Senate.  Fenty and a senior council member liked the idea.  At minimum, the media would have to cover the change, bringing much needed attention to DC's taxation without representation status.

You should check out http://www.dcvote.org

I have actually lived in DC and my relatives live there currently.  I love the city.  I just think they have a lot of problems that make them unattractive to MD for retrosession. You say that MD has no legal mechanism to take back its part of the District.  Read this Wiki; VA did it, so MD can do it as well. They just don't want to.  Part of DC's governance problem is that Congress gets to overrule any decision by the mayor and the city council.  No other mayor has it this crappy in the US.  

I hope to live in DC again next year, but I don't think it is a stretch to say the city has lots of problems.

There is certainly a legal mechanism for returning the District of Columbia (note spelling) to Maryland: the same retrocession mechanism used to return Arlington to Virginia in 1846. Now, that solution doesn't seem very workable politically, but it does exist. Of course, no other mechanism seems very workable politically either.

From a districting point of view, the implications of apportioning DC to Maryland for Congressional purposes are quite interesting.  On a numbers alone, DC would give Maryland enough Democrats for a 9-0 delegation.  The maps for that would probably look like an octopus Bacchanal, though.  An 8-1 split, achieved (perhaps) by moving part of CD7 into CD1, shifting everything else north, and throwing some of Calvert and St.Mary's (and PG) into the DC district, seems easy.

As far as Maryland taking on DC for governance purposes, I think the opinion of Marylanders would be that the school system alone is enough of a cesspool that no rational person would want to assume responsibility for it.  But the DC governance problems go far deeper than the schools.  Just how long did you wait in line to get your driver's license, pray tell?  Pretty much every DC government department, as far as I can tell, is unspeakably ossified and corrupt.

Well, I think that's going overboard.  DC has never had congressional representation, even when most of its population was white.  This is because under the constitution, House members can only come from states.  (In fact, I don't see how this bill can fly, anyway.)

Utah is given the extra seat not because it's white, but because it's next in line given its population, and because it's reliably Republican.

If DC were a state it would get one representative and two senators, same as Wyoming (which is a little smaller in population) and Vermont (which is a little larger). Where would a second representative come from?

Why should DC get 2 House members when its population doesn't justify that?  We actually are below the national threshold required for 1 district.

I agree with the rest of what you said though.  It's just that in a Republican Congress especially, Norton and Davis had to find a plan with bipartisan support in order to actually pass it.  I heard Norton recently say that will still be the case because of Republican opposition in the Senate.

I have a friend who thinks DC should take back its portion of Virginia.  HA!  That might entitle us to 2 House seats though.  It would also make VA more Republican.

I am sorry but Matheson is far for a "Republican."  He may vote very conservatively, more than I personally would like, but he did vote for Pelosi (and Hoyer) and he is a supporter of lots of progressive things like a woman's right to choose, unions, no nuclear testing, etc.

Matheson got a larger percentage of the vote than any one else up in Utah this year save Orin Hatch.  That says something, discontented liberals notwithstanding.  

Also Matheson won't have to vote on conservative issues with Dems in charge now, so his score will probably go up these next years.  

Matheson can win.  Good luck getting Jim McDermott or Maxine Waters elected anywhere in Utah.

   What a rope-a-dope that would be.  I certainly would not put it past this Supreme Court.  We all know that their hands are tied when it comes to full, equal voting rights.  These types of things make me embarrassed to be an American.  I really hate having to explain these things to supportive foreigners.

It does appear to be unconstitutional, but then why would they be putting this bill forward?  You have to figure the proponents of the bill know about that part of the constitution.  Do they maybe know something that we don't or that we are overlooking here?

Interpreting the constitution is just not that simple (unless you are Scalia). Looking at court precedent, the intent of the framers, etc, DC has received the opinion from a number of scholars and attorneys on the matter, and strongly believe this will be found constitutional.
Here is one opinion, for example; http://www.dcvote.org/pdfs/smithsimplele gmemo052202.pdf

While it would clearly be ideal to get a Constitutional Amendment, it just is not a reality. (The majority of DC citizens are for Statehood, not retrocession to MD, and there was an amendment in 1978, but it failed to be ratified.)

Also, DC's Delegate did have a vote in the early 90's, along with the Delegates of other "territories". But, in 1995 (when republican's took control of the house) they voted to eliminate all of those votes...without distinguishing DC's, who pay taxes, and the other territories that don't.

DC has been struggling for voting rights for generations, and while mixing voting rights with politics seems distasteful, I think this is a pill we must swallow.

That's why it's critical that the bill include a non-severability clause, so that if it is found unconstitutional, both DC and Utah would lose 1 House seat.

Matheson won't retire for decades, although he might run for Senate or Governor in the future in which case we would lose his seat if he ran in a non-new 2nd district.  But I think trading a House seat for a Senate seat or governorship is worth it.  

As to the constitutionality, why not try and give DC its representation?  Let SCOTUS on the record against full representation and see what people think about that.

The idea of reverting to 435 after 2010 was in the original plan but was abandoned in favor of permanently enlarging the House because otherwise some state would end up losing a rep in order to give DC one.

The at-large seat for Utah was also in the original plan but was shot down by Sensenbrenner. It's now a normal seat, which is why the redistricting is necessary.

I don't know whether it would be possible for the DC seat to be found unconstitutional while letting the Utah seat stand.

That's what I heard.

Actually, since DC already votes in presidential elections by virtue of the 24th Amendment, this bill's effect on the Electoral College could be interesting.  It would add 2 House seats, but would it add just 1 Electoral College vote (to 539)?  Otherwise DC would be overrepresented in the Electoral College in 2008 since we already have 3 electoral votes.

This might not be a good thing for Democrats. The extra electoral vote would go to Utah, and thus to the Republican candidate. The only scenario where this would matter would be if the Democrat got 269 electoral votes. As things stand now, Democrats control the majority of state delegations in the House 26-21 (with AZ, KS, and MS split) and thus might win; however, with the extra electoral vote for Utah, the Republican would win.

Having said that, I don't think this is sufficient cause to oppose the DC/UT plan for the following reasons:

1) Contingency elections in the House have historically been disastrous. Even if it's bad for Democrats right now, any patriotic American should want contingency elections gone for good. Constitutional reform would be nice, but I'll take this.

2) In the long term, Republicans are more likely to control a majority of state delegations most of the time. Just for starters, KS, MS, NC, TN, ND, SD, IN, AZ, CO, WV, and IA could fall into the Republican column any time. On the other hand, looking at current population projections, the 436th seat (and thus the 539th electoral vote) after the 2010 census could easily be a Democrat in PA, CA, AL, NY, or MA. Preserving a slight Democratic advantage for just the 2008 election is foolish.

3) A contingency election in the House would be painful for the Democratic Party, and there's no guarantee that we'd win. When such a vote seemed possible in 2000, some southern Democrats said that they would vote for George W. Bush because their states had voted for him. I think Gene Taylor would vote for a Republican, and Democrats in NC, TN, IN, and the Dakotas would be tempted as well.

non-partisan redistricting in Utah would separate the urban/suburban centers (Odgen-Salt Lake-Provo-Park-City) from the rural areas.  

I think it is unfair for the people in unpopulous counties to compete for attention from their congress[wo]men with the Wasatsch front. With 4 seats, you could make one Provo/ S. SL County centered, One SLC/Park City centered, one Ogden/ N. SLC suburbs centered, and one rural district.

The end result would be fairly close to Huntsman's map.  Better for Utah and better for Democrats.  Afterall, 35-45% of Utah votes Democrat, they should have about that many members of congress.