‘Vote no’: Anti-gerrymandering groups launch campaign against Utah constitutional amendment

A coalition of anti-gerrymandering groups urge Utah voters to reject a constitutional amendment on ballot initiatives during a rally at the Utah Capitol in Salt Lake City on Aug. 26, 2024. (Katie McKellar / Utah News Dispatch)

With a rallying cry of “vote no, vote no, vote no,” hundreds of Utahns packed onto the steps of the Utah Capitol on Monday to launch a campaign urging voters to reject a proposed constitutional amendment this November.

The campaign, spearheaded by the anti-gerrymandering group Better Boundaries , has so far raised $30,000 for the effort from some 270 donors and counting, according to executive director Katie Wright.

“We believe in checks and balances, and we are united in keeping our state balanced,” Wright said during the rally. “We will not give up our rights to politicians. Politicians are asking you to give up your constitutional right, but we will vote no.”

Wright, referring to a letter circulated ahead of last week’s special session that more than 2,500 people signed urging Utah lawmakers to respect the Utah Supreme Court interpretation of the Utah Constitution, said Better Boundaries has “heard from thousands of Utans” who are “united against this power grab.”

Better Boundaries to lawmakers ahead of special session: Respect Utah Supreme Court ruling

Among those who spoke during the rally were leaders from the bipartisan group Mormon Women for Ethical Government, as well as at least one Republican legislator (Sen. Daniel Thatcher, R-West Valley City) who voted against putting the proposed constitutional amendment on Utahns’ ballots.

One of the most prominent speakers, however, was retired Utah Supreme Court chief justice, Christine Durham.

Durham served on Utah’s Independent Redistricting Commission, which in 2021 recommended independently drawn electoral maps. But Utah’s Republican supermajority ultimately ignored them — which led to an anti-gerrymandering lawsuit over Utah’s redistricting process, a Utah Supreme Court ruling that revived the lawsuit and upset Republican lawmakers, and, eventually the debate Monday over whether to amend Utah’s Constitution in spite of the court ruling.

Monday’s rally — where protesters carried bright red signs reading “protect your rights, vote no” — came just five days after the Utah Legislature called itself into an “emergency” special session to place a complex but crucial question before voters on the Nov. 5 ballot to effectively ask voters to sidestep a recent Utah Supreme Court ruling that Utah’s Republican supermajority worries will handcuff their power to alter or repeal ballot initiatives.

The question before voters: Should the Utah Constitution be amended to make clear the Utah Legislature has the ultimate power to amend, enact or repeal a law adopted by any ballot initiative, as well as should it be amended to ban “foreign individuals, entities or governments” from influencing an initiative or referendum?

Or should the Utah Supreme Court decision stand — and should the Utah Constitution remain the same?

Republican legislative leaders argue the constitutional amendment is needed because the Utah Supreme Court’s ruling paved the way for invincible “super laws” enacted by ballot initiatives that the Utah Legislature would have no way of changing.

But Democrats, some Republicans that voted against putting the constitutional amendment on the ballot, and other opponents including anti-gerrymandering groups like Better Boundaries, argued that fears of “super laws” are an unfounded overreaction. They also note the Supreme Court’s decision sets limits, specifically when it comes to “government reform” ballot initiatives — and it explicitly states the Legislature can still alter ballot initiatives, just not undermine them.

The argument against

Ryan Bell, a board member of Better Boundaries, started his remarks by saying Utahns now find themselves in a “very strange situation.”

“The Utah State Legislature is seeking to ensure its supremacy over the will and voice of the people of Utah,” Bell said, which drew boos from the crowd.

He said the Utah Constitution “gives the people the right” to enact laws through the ballot initiative process, but “it has become clear that when the people exercise this right, the Legislature gets defensive of what they do as their turf.”

Bell said lawmakers demonstrated that in 2018, after voters approved Better Boundaries’ ballot initiative, Proposition 4, which sought an independent commission to set Utah’s political boundaries during its redistricting process. When voters passed that ballot initiative, he said Utahns “sent a message” to lawmakers that “we no longer trust them to draw fair election districts.”

“They chose to ignore the express will of the people, tossing out the initiative and passing their own law, appropriating back to themselves the right to draw their own legislative districts in the way that they choose,” he said.

Believing the Utah Constitution gave them ultimate authority to repeal and replace ballot initiatives with their own versions of the law, the Utah Legislature in 2020 adopted a watered-down version of the new redistricting process. That allowed Utah Lawmakers to ignore independently-drawn maps and adopt their own versions, which is ultimately what Republican lawmakers did in 2021 when it came time to set Utah’s new political districts for the next 10 years.

Those 2021 maps cracked Democratic strongholds in the red state of Utah , including a congressional map that sliced Utah’s most populated county, Salt Lake County, into four congressional districts.

A lawsuit challenged the Legislature’s repeal and replacement of that independent commission. The League of Women Voters of Utah — along with the group Mormon Women for Ethical Government and individual Salt Lake County residents who alleged they were disenfranchised by unlawful gerrymandering — claimed the Utah Legislature overstepped when it repealed and replaced Better Boundaries’ voter-approved initiative.

The case ended up before the Utah Supreme Court, which on July 11 issued a unanimous ruling that angered Utah Republican legislators and spurred last week’s special session. In that opinion, the Utah Supreme Court remanded the lawsuit back to district court , with all five of Utah’s justices ruling that the district court “erred” when it dismissed the League of Women Voters’ claim that the Utah Legislature violated the Utah Constitution in 2021 when it repealed and replaced Better Boundaries’ voter-approved initiative.

That litigation now continues, but the Supreme Court ruling was a major victory for the plaintiffs, and for Better Boundaries’ anti-gerrymandering efforts.

Utah Legislature asks voters to change constitution, skirt Supreme Court ballot initiatives ruling

“The court unanimously decided the Legislature does not get to veto the direct action of the people,” Bell said, to loud cheers.

Bell described Utah legislative leaders’ seething response to the ruling — saying it effectively made a “new law about the initiative power, creating chaos and striking at the very heart of our Republic ” — as “language of politicians who are accustomed to exercising total power while being accountable to no one.”

“Last week, the tantrum continued,” he said, referring to the special session that allowed Utah’s lawmakers to approve the proposed constitutional amendment and lay out a fast-tracked process to get it on the ballot in time for the Nov. 5 election.

“They’ve decided on the nuclear option. They’re just going to rewrite that troublesome constitution,” Bell said, to more boos. “Employing that same supermajority they obtained by drawing unfair voting districts in the first place, they approved a constitutional amendment that was sloppily drafted over a couple of quick, panicky days, which will give them power to simply veto initiatives passed by the voice of the people.”

Bell, who called himself a conservative, said it would be “difficult to imagine anything less conservative than a knee-jerk, slap-dash, rewriting of the constitution in order to shift more power from the people to their representatives.”

Bell urged Utah voters, regardless of their party affiliation, to not “give our leaders more control over us.”

“We, the people, are the ultimate authority in this government, and if this legislature wants to pick a fight to change that balance, that is the signal that we need to leak arms as citizens of Utah and let them know they have badly misunderstood their role and badly, badly underestimated us.”

Bell said Better Boundaries and the larger coalition of groups uniting to oppose the constitutional amendment reject it as an effort to “elevate the interests of representatives over the people they represent.”

“We look forward to connecting and joining with all Utahns as we work to maintain the proper balance of power in the state,” Bell said. “Now let’s get to work.”

A campaign in favor is also brewing

Seeing as the Utah Legislature only moved last week to place the proposed constitutional amendment on the ballot, voters have barely two months to wrap their heads around the complex issue.

While the Better Boundaries coalition is rolling out their campaign to urge voters to vote no, so is the other side. From their corner, a coalition of business and community leaders are preparing to mount a campaign in support of the constitutional amendment.

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That coalition includes the Salt Lake Chamber (which issued a statement last week supporting the constitutional amendment), as well as prominent business leader Scott Anderson, who recently retired as president and CEO of Zions Bank.

“Utah has benefitted from the right balance between the initiative process and the legislative process for over a century,” Anderson said in a prepared statement to Utah News Dispatch on Monday. “The recent Utah Supreme Court decision incentivizes outside interests to meddle in Utah’s affairs through the initiative process. Unless we act immediately, our state risks following the disastrous path of states like California.”

The Salt Lake Chamber’s statement, explaining its position, said it “supports the foundational principle of respecting the will of the people in lawmaking processes, whether through their duly elected representatives or constitutional ballot initiatives.”

The chamber said it supports the constitutional amendment because it “restores certainty, predictability and balance between legislative and initiative lawmaking processes; Upholds the integrity of democratic rights by prohibiting foreign influence, support and funds for initiatives and referendums; and protects Utah’s best-in-class economy and avoids Utah becoming a state that is governed by unfettered, unlimited and unchangeable ballot initiatives.”

Foreign interests and California-style politics?

To concerns that ballot initiatives open the door to funding from special interests to control Utah’s laws, Wright told Utah News Dispatch in an interview after the rally that the Utah Legislature “is also funded by special interest groups.”

She said Utah lawmakers are copying the playbook from other states, like Ohio , where voters are slated to consider an anti-gerrymandering amendment.

Utah Supreme Court’s ‘watershed’ redistricting ruling has major implications. Now what?

“We find it frustrating that they’re not actually listening to the people of Utah, instead they’re playing into some national pseudo crisis,” Wright said.

The exact language for the constitutional amendment that will appear on Utah’s Nov. 5 ballot has yet to be finalized — but lawmakers also passed another special session bill, SB4002 , to establish an expedited timeline and condensed process to write the ballot language. Though it will be one ballot question, Utah voters will vote on two issues: whether the Utah Legislature should have ultimate authority to repeal and replace any ballot initiative, and whether to constitutionally ban “foreign individuals, entities or governments” from influencing an initiative or referendum.

By combining those two issues into one question and by passing a bill giving lawmakers the ability to write the ballot language, Wright said she’s “very concerned that the language will be challenging for voters.”

However, Wright said she also trusts voters “to be really thoughtful, and I think ultimately they’ll vote no.”

There is no evidence of foreign interference in Utah’s elections — though legislative leaders said they put that language in to prevent any future meddling. But Wright said that’s a “red herring” to tempt Utah voters to pass the constitutional amendment.

To claims that Utah allowing the Utah Supreme Court ruling to stand will open the door to California-style lawmaking in Utah, Wright noted Utah has much more restrictive ballot initiative requirements than California.

Durham, in her remarks during the rally, also challenged that claim. She focused her remarks on the history of Better Boundaries’ efforts to implement independent redistricting in Utah as well as what the Utah Supreme Court’s decision did or didn’t say. “There is no basis on which this (Utah Supreme Court) opinion would create California in Utah,” the former chief justice said.

Rather, Durham said the opinion “focuses solely” on the “Alter or Reform” clause of the Utah Constitution. “It doesn’t speak to any other type of initiative,” she said, though she noted there could be future challenges on that issue.

Durham also questioned why “outsiders” would want to spend money to influence Utah lawmaking. “Can you imagine why anybody would want to spend loads of money on Utah’s form of government?” she said, drawing laughs from the crowd. “I don’t quite get it, but that’s going to be the campaign and we have to be ready to refute it.”

Durham said she moved to Utah in the ’70s, and back then there was much more bipartisanship in Utah’s politics. But she said in the decades since, that’s changed.

“It’s become more and more difficult over the years to get any kind of bipartisanship, because there’s no need for it. Because we have a one-party state,” she said. “It’s time for us to say no.”

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