For those concerned that Republican members of the Utah Legislature gerrymandered voting districts in 2011 to their advantage — with the specific goal of ousting Democrat Rep. Jim Matheson from Congress — Tuesday’s final vote count provides a telling data point: Matheson won.

The Democrats have been all in knots over the supposed gerrymandering, demanding, for example, to see all legislative emails relating to redistricting.  What do they say now that their guy won the election? That the Republicans cheated but just not well enough?

We predict a series of rationalizations from the Dems. The GOP gerrymandered but fielded a candidate, Mia Love, whose inexperience was not enough to overcome an old hand who is practically a Republican anyway.

Argue whatever you want, but the fact remains: Matheson won in a new Fourth District that was supposedly stacked deliberately against him.

It’s hard not to conclude — if you take it as an article of faith that gerrymandering occurred — that Utah’s legislative Republicans stink when it comes to using their power for their own advantage.

One would have to conclude that if the legislative maps had been honest that Matheson would have won by a much larger margin than the 768 votes it came down to on Tuesday.

“We knew it would be a close race based on a very challenging set of circumstances,” Matheson said. “I don’t think the moon and stars can ever align against me like they did this year.”

Sure, he had the Mitt Romney coattail effect that was supposed to work in Love’s favor. He had big GOP money to face, money from outside sources that poured into Utah to ice Love’s victory.

Notice that Matheson was polite enough to avoid mentioning the gerrymandering that has the Utah Democratic Party all in a dither. Never mind that they never established that any such shenanigans took place.

We certainly agree with our Democrat friends that gerrymandering is a bad thing, despite its illustrious history. Ideally it should be eliminated, but that’s unrealistic. As long as humans beings are part of the political process, attempts at unstatesmanlike manipulation of the process are going to be with us.

But cheating can be kept to a minimum with strong leadership in both parties. Legislative district maps should be drawn with the characteristics of communities in mind, not party affiliation, and good leaders will do their utmost to see that that’s how it happens. Any discussions about party advantage in once-a-decade mapping process should be firmly — even harshly — shut down.

That’s one important lesson that should come out of all this. Historical instances of gerrymandering do not justify the practice.

A second lesson is that a minority political party should not assume — in the absence of factual evidence — that the majority party is cheating. It is likely, in our view, that Republicans managed the redistricting process properly and with generous input from Democrats. We’ve seen this in the way meetings were conducted.

But of course it’s possible that cheating happened off the radar, on backstairs and in private caucuses. The only solution to that is transparency, and in that sense we might agree in principle with Democrat efforts to gain access to Republican emails. Too bad they were unwilling to pay the reasonable fee that anybody else would have to pay.

Which brings us to the third lesson: All legislative documents that are clearly not exempt from public disclosure under Utah’s Government Records Access and Management Act (GRAMA) — regardless of subject matter — should be routinely and automatically posted to the Internet for examination by press and public.

A simple move like this would go a long way toward building trust in government and reducing suspicions of foul play.