Opinion: Utah Legislature’s amendment language is confusing and misleading

Chaos. Confusion. Complete lack of understanding.

This was my experience during a recent visit to a Senate hearing of the Utah State Legislature.

I have severe hearing loss; my cochlear implants give me almost perfect comprehension in a sound box, but I struggle with poor acoustics. Fortunately, I have since learned that I have multiple options to help me hear at such hearings in the future.

However, the very issue that brought me to the Capitol is still creating chaos, confusion and massive misunderstandings among Utah voters.

I visited the Capitol during an “emergency” session , when the Legislature passed an amendment to the Utah Constitution , the founding document of our state. Now named Amendment D, this proposed amendment — rushed through the Legislature with only a few minutes allowed for citizen comments — seeks to eliminate voters’ rights to alter or reform their government.

This right is enshrined in the Utah Constitution itself: the Alter or Reform Clause of Article 1, Section 2 reads: “All political power is inherent in the people; and all free governments are founded on their authority for their equal protection and benefit, and they have the right to alter or reform their government as the public welfare may require.”

Based upon this clause, the Utah State Supreme Court recently upheld , unanimously, this right, ruling that the Legislature had violated it when they repealed Prop 4 , passed in 2018 by a majority of Utahns, which created the Utah Independent Redistricting Commission (IRC) and simultaneously banned partisan gerrymandering . Instead, the Utah Legislature ignored the Commission’s suggestions and (over a hurried weekend) enacted a gerrymandered congressional map despite widespread opposition from Utah citizens. In reaction to the Utah Court’s unanimous decision, our legislators are sowing confusion to insulate their power at the expense of Utah’s voters.

On Thursday, Sept. 5, a group of Utah plaintiffs filed a preliminary injunction to block Amendment D from being placed on the November 2024 ballot. Their reasoning? Confusion, misunderstanding and even chaos are all likely outcomes of the blatantly opaque and misleading language of Amendment D ballot description, which does not accurately describe the actual text of the proposed amendment. Sandwiched between two distracting statements to pander to voters, the crux of Amendment D would be to enshrine in the state constitution the authority of the Legislature to nullify all citizen initiatives. This is a dangerous change giving unlimited power to the Legislature.

To amend the state constitution, the Legislature may propose an amendment, but Utah’s people must approve it. The state constitution also mandates public notice, including being published in a newspaper in every county for two months prior to the election (Article 23, Section 1). Judicial opinions have strongly backed the importance of this notice, especially for constitutional amendments. For something as serious as this matter, voters should have access to accurate information and ample time to review it. Yet finding the actual language of the Amendment to compare it to the ballot language is particularly difficult. If a person knows the exact bill number (SJR 401), they can try to look it up on the state legislature’s website. They can look through public notices, but as of noon on Saturday, Sept. 7, it was not listed among the Lieutenant Governor’s disclosures.

The total lack of transparency and of access to amendment language violates our state constitution. In their request for an injunction , the plaintiffs note that the ballot language “seeks through deception to mislead Utah voters into surrendering their constitutional rights.”

Fortunately, there are guardrails against allowing deceptively worded measures to be sent to Utah’s voters. As the injunction request states, the misleading and inaccurate ballot language violates several provisions of the Utah Constitution, including requirements for submitting amendments to voters, the free elections, free speech and expression, right to vote clauses and the right to ensure a free government guaranteed to all Utahns. The ballot language also violates a state statute containing requirements for submitting the amendment to the voters.

Being forced to vote on a confusing, misleading and deceptive amendment to our state constitution, the injunction argues, will cause “irreparable harm” to Utahns. We deserve better.

Due to my hearing, I was unable to understand all that was said in the Senate hearing. I was in a state of confusion (and frustration!). But no one was purposefully trying to confuse me.

In contrast, the series of infractions of laws and norms we have observed during the process of passing and sharing the language for Amendment D seem to have been constructed to confound Utah’s voters. We must not let such violations to our state constitution stand.

Lisa R. Halverson is a civics education and research fellow at Utah Valley University’s Center for Constitutional Studies. She also serves as the advocacy director of research for Mormon Women for Ethical Government (MWEG). MWEG is one of the plaintiffs in both the original suit and the preliminary injunction.