Utah citizen initiatives at stake as judge weighs keeping major changes off ballots
A Utah judge promises to rule Thursday on whether to strike an amendment to the state constitution from the November ballot that would give the state legislature the power to override citizen initiatives.
The League of Women Voters of Utah and others have filed a lawsuit challenging the proposal, which was approved by lawmakers in August, alleging, among other things, that the language on the ballot describing the proposal is confusing.
The groups are now trying to get the measure off the ballots before they are printed. With the election less than eight weeks away, they face a tight deadline without putting Utah’s county clerks in the costly position of reprinting ballots.
Salt Lake County District Judge Dianna Gibson told attorneys during a hearing Wednesday that she would issue an informal ruling via email that evening and a formal ruling to the public Thursday morning.
Any voter could misinterpret the ballot and think it would strengthen the citizen initiative process, League of Women Voters attorney Mark Gaber argued at the hearing.
“That is just indisputably not what the text of this amendment does,” Gaber said.
The amendment would do exactly the opposite, giving the legislature the power to repeal voter initiatives, Gaber said.
When asked by the judge whether the amendment would increase lawmakers’ power over citizen initiatives, Tyler Green, an attorney for the legislature, replied that it would do exactly what the ballot text says: strengthen the initiative process.
The judge asked Green whether the Legislature, which approved the proposed amendment less than three weeks ago, was partly to blame for the tight deadline.
“The legislature can’t just do anything,” Green replied.
The proposed amendment stems from a 2018 ballot measure that would have created an independent commission to draw districts every decade. The changes were opposed by the Republican-dominated Legislature.
The measure prohibited drawing district lines to protect incumbent politicians or favor a political party, a practice known as gerrymandering. Lawmakers repealed that provision in 2020.
And while the vote allowed lawmakers to approve or redraw the commission’s maps, the Legislature completely ignored the commission’s congressional map and his own.
The map divides relatively liberal Salt Lake City into four districts, each now represented by a Republican.
In July, the Utah Supreme Court ruled that the GOP had overstepped its bounds by repealing the ban on political gerrymandering.
Lawmakers responded by holding a meeting special session in august to add a measure to the November ballot asking voters to grant them a power the state Supreme Court ruled they did not have.