Legislative Republicans rush to fix the terrible threat of voters making decisions

Last month, the GOP-controlled Utah Legislature rushed into an "emergency" special session to put a proposed constitutional amendment on the November ballot that would guarantee their ability to alter or change any ballot initiatives approved by voters.

The "emergency" was a ruling from the Utah Supreme Court that lawmakers overstepped their authority when they gutted Prop. 4, the anti-gerrymandering ballot initiative, which narrowly passed in 2018.

Prop. 4, also known as "Better Boundaries," took the once-a-decade task of reapportionment out of the hands of lawmakers by establishing an independent commission tasked with drawing the state's maps. The commission could not consider where an incumbent lives or use any partisan voter information when drawing maps and would be required to keep communities together. The Legislature could reject maps drawn by the commission, but only if they could show how the map violated those guidelines.

Lawmakers gutted the initiative by reducing the independent commission to an advisory role. The commission drew maps for the 2021 redistricting cycle, which lawmakers dismissed before approving their own heavily gerrymandered boundaries.

The case has been sent back to a lower court. Depending on what the judge decides, lawmakers could be forced to redraw the political maps under guidelines established by Prop. 4.

It's ludicrous to suggest new political maps might threaten the GOP majority in the Utah Legislature. But, if a judge orders new maps using the parameters approved by voters, that would likely create more competitive districts where Democrats have a chance to win. If the minority party could pick up a dozen seats in the House, which seems like a stretch, or four seats in the Senate, that would break the GOP supermajority.

It's not just new maps that could threaten the GOP supermajority. A group calling itself "People 4 Utah" is planning a ballot initiative in 2026 to fundamentally change Utah's elections. Instead of political parties nominating one candidate for the November ballot, there would be an open primary featuring every candidate regardless of party affiliation. The top two vote-getters in the primary would advance to the November election. Such a system would favor candidates with broad appeal instead of those backed by small but intense groups of the most partisan voters.

Preserving their ability to override anything voters may approve at the ballot box is crucial to how legislative Republicans currently operate. Disagreements over policy are hashed out behind closed doors, away from the public. Public debates and votes are usually a formality, as the outcome has already been determined.

In recent years, legislative leaders have used their supermajority to exempt themselves from most of the checks and balances in the Utah Constitution. A supermajority not only allows the GOP-controlled Legislature to ignore the governor's threat of a veto but also blocks citizens' efforts to undo their actions at the ballot box.

Under the Utah Constitution, citizens can launch a referendum effort to put any law passed by lawmakers up for a vote in the next election. However, if a law is approved by a two-thirds vote in both the House and Senate, then a referendum on the law is not allowed. That means if the supermajority wants to do something, there's really nothing to stop them.

School vouchers are a perfect example.

In 2007, lawmakers passed school vouchers, but a massive signature-gathering effort spearheaded by teachers put the issue on the ballot where voters overwhelmingly rejected it.

There was no serious effort to revisit using public funds to pay for private schools until 2022, when Rep. Candice Pierucci, R-Riverton, rebranded vouchers as the "Utah Fits All Scholarship." That bill never made it out of the House because of teacher opposition and a veto threat from Gov. Spencer Cox.

A year later, Pierucci tacked a pay raise for public school teachers onto her voucher proposal, and lawmakers rammed the bill through in the first two weeks of the 2023 session with two-thirds support in both chambers. A veto by Cox would have likely been overridden. Despite the pay raise, the Utah Education Association publicly opposed the bill, but there was no possibility for a referendum effort to let voters weigh in.

For a referendum to qualify for the ballot, it requires a Herculean effort. Organizers must gather signatures from registered voters equal to 8% of the total number of active voters statewide and reach that 8% threshold in 15 of Utah's State Senate districts. They also have 40 days from the end of the legislative session to get enough signatures to qualify.

Including 2007's voucher referendum, Utah voters have overturned decisions by the Utah Legislature at the ballot box only four times since 1954.

In 2019, lawmakers spent the better part of a year crafting a sweeping tax overhaul package that hiked sales taxes on products and services, including groceries. They approved the tax overhaul in a special session but failed to secure a two-thirds majority. Opponents launched a referendum effort and secured enough signatures to qualify for the ballot. In response, lawmakers repealed the law, heading off a public vote.

Right now, the only real check on their power is the courts. Legislative leaders were apoplectic after the Utah Supreme Court ruled against them in the gerrymandering lawsuit.

"Rather than reaching the self-evident answer, today the court punted and made a new law about the initiative power, creating chaos and striking at the very heart of our republic," Senate President Stuart Adams, R-Layton, and House Speaker Mike Schultz, R-Hooper, raged in a joint statement.

When you're used to always getting your way, being told "no" is an unforgivable sin.

Lawmakers were already considering ways to curtail citizen-led initiatives before the current dustup. Earlier this year, Rep. Jason Kyle, R-Hunstville, proposed a pair of bills to make it harder to pass any ballot initiative that raises taxes or creates a new tax. Kyle's bill required a 60% "yes" vote, while any other initiative would only require a majority. Kyle's effort was unsuccessful.