I’ve been thinking about that question as I’ve during the disputes over redistricting (including what some call gerrymandering) both locally and nationally. It also came to mind when I read a recent guest opinion discussing Utah’s Republican Party and the familiar talking points about the caucus/convention system.

It’s one thing to look at those issues from the high-level perspective of statistics and elections, but it’s a little different when you look at it from the perspective of individual voters.

Because we are all different.

We have different ideas that resonate with us, different priorities, different beliefs, and different approaches to addressing the many challenges that face us in our communities. That perspective naturally shapes how we will vote, both for our public representatives and on issues.

That reality impacts how I look at redistricting.

Many of the arguments I see about the negatives of how legislatures and commissions approach the redistricting process are based on trends on how voters have voted in the past. Many find it too tempting to use their responsibility to attempt to strengthen the position of the party that reflects the majority views, which then turns into “gerrymandering.”

But no matter how you draw the district boundaries, there will be individual voters who will be outnumbered. Arguments about neighborhoods or cities or counties or geographical regions needing to be in the same district are flawed because each are made up of a collection of those individuals.

I know that in the neighborhood I live in, there are many friends (as well as those I don’t know as well) who have significantly different views about politics.

And that’s fine. That’s how it should be.

I just wish the political parties did more to try to find common ground with voters instead of focusing on court battles and redistricting.

What happened to having better ideas? More solutions? To recognizing that every voter has a right to decide what message will be rewarded with their vote?

I see that problem also as the major flaw of the caucus/convention system arguments that I’ve heard.

I’ve been involved in the process and in our most recent caucus meeting, I think we had about 40 or 50 people participate. When I asked the precinct chair, I was told there are more than 700 registered members of the party in the precinct.

That means that, at best, only 7% of the precinct was represented at the caucus meeting. Only a handful (less than 1% of the precinct) then moved on to represent the caucus at the county and state conventions.

As a delegate, though, I quickly recognized that my views are very different than other people’s views.

Caucus/convention supporters frequently highlight how that process results in candidates that are more vetted — but there are problems with that. I asked candidates questions that mattered to me when I met with them, not all of the questions that each of the 700-plus other voters in our district wanted to ask.

Even doing my very best, how can I pretend my vote adequately and fairly represents some 250 other voters?

Why shouldn’t they just vote for themselves?

Some have brought up that we don’t have a democracy but a representative republic, where we as people select the individuals who will devote their time to work through complicated issues, and isn’t that what the caucus/convention does?

I just don’t think we need a go-between to decide who will represent us. It should be on us as citizens to be responsible and do the best we can with our votes, not surrender that duty to anyone else.

Our system of voting and government certainly isn’t perfect. There will always be problems.

But I hope we valuable our ability to participate, regardless of district or system.

Because each vote — and each voter — matters.

Jared Lloyd is the managing editor of the Daily Herald.