If You Can’t Win Honestly… Cheat.

Well that is what they want to do in Utah! All because they are worried about the voters passing a referendum allowing abortions.

Utah lawmakers want voters to give them the power to change ballot measures once they’ve passed
AP News
By  HANNAH SCHOENBAUM
August 21, 2024

 Utah’s Republican-controlled Legislature will ask voters in November to relinquish some of their rights to lawmakers who want the ability to change state ballot measures after they’ve passed.

Frustrated by a recent state Supreme Court ruling, lawmakers called a special session Wednesday in which both chambers swiftly approved an amendment to Utah’s constitution that would grant them greater power over citizen initiatives. The Legislature used its broadly worded emergency powers to hold the session.

If a majority of Utah voters approves the amendment this fall, it would give lawmakers constitutional authority to significantly rewrite voter-approved ballot measures or repeal them entirely.

Democrats decried the decision as a “power grab,” while Republicans argued it would be dangerous to have certain laws on the books that cannot be substantially changed. The proposal would let lawmakers apply their new power to initiatives from past election cycles.

We can’t trust the voters to do the right thing… vote the way we want them to vote!

He pointed to how Republicans are trying to sweeten the deal for voters by tying the amendment’s success to other election reforms. For example, deadline extensions that might make it easier to place a voter referendum on the ballot will only pass if the amendment does, too.

And of course the Republicans right out of the 1984 novel give their twist on the reason of the bill,

State Sen. Kirk Cullimore, a Draper Republican and a sponsor of the proposal, said during floor debate that a recent state Supreme Court ruling in a redistricting case has effectively turned ballot initiatives into “super laws” that are not subject to the same revisions as laws passed by the Legislature.

Of the minor detail that they overlook to mention was that the court ordered the redistricting and if the Republicans don’t like the way the independent commission redraws the map they want to change it.

Last month, all five Republican-appointed state Supreme Court justices sided with plaintiffs who argued the GOP supermajority had overstepped its authority and undermined voters when it altered the ballot initiative that banned partisan gerrymandering. The court found that lawmakers do not currently have the authority to change laws approved through citizen initiatives except to reinforce them without impairing them, or to advance a compelling government interest.

Now, the Legislature is attempting to circumvent that ruling by expanding its constitutional authority over voters — but voters themselves will have the final say.

But the Republicans don’t like being told what to do… it is their way or else!

Utah should get new congressional maps, without the gerrymandering. How might those maps look?
A Utah Supreme Court decision puts the power back in the hands of the people.
Salt Lake Tribune
By Andy Larsen
August 19, 2024


It might have been the biggest political win for Utahns — regular ol’ Utah citizens — in decades.

I’m referring to the Utah Supreme Court’s decision last month to strike down the state Legislature’s repeal of Proposition 4, the citizen initiative that prohibited partisan gerrymandering, as unconstitutional.

The court’s argument was straightforward: Utah’s Constitution says that people “have the right to alter or reform their government as the public welfare may require,” and further establishes the public’s right to citizen initiatives. The Legislature can pass almost all sorts of laws, but it can’t pass laws that infringe upon constitutional rights.

Therefore, “government-reform initiatives are constitutionally protected from unfettered legislative amendment, repeal, or replacement,” the court decided.

[…]

So it’s worth reminding ourselves just what the Proposition 4 map standards were:

1. Adhering to federal law and achieving equal population between districts
2. Minimizing divisions of municipalities and counties across multiple districts
3. Making districts geographically compact
4. Making districts that are contiguous and allow for ease of transport throughout the district
5. Preserving traditional neighborhoods and local communities of interest
6. Following natural and geographic boundaries, barriers and features
7. Maximizing the agreement of boundaries between different types of districts
8. Avoiding dividing districts in a manner that “purposefully or unduly favors” a political party or candidate

Remember, the Legislature’s map actually passed muster by the Princeton Gerrymandering Project’s algorithm at first. The map is, to its credit, very compact. It avoids racial inequity extremely well, and in an imaginary 50/50 election in Utah, the Democrats would win one or two seats. The Princeton machine gave it an A letter grade ... before its human directors came in and looked at how the Legislature had achieved it. Eventually, the grade was downgraded to a C.

The problem is the population of Utah makes it hard to dived up the four districts.

A math researcher at Brigham Young University, Annika King, noticed these problems, and wanted to figure out a better way of studying Utah’s maps objectively. In her paper “Mathematical Analysis of Redistricting in Utah,” King found via computer modeling that it was actually impossible to make two contiguous districts in Utah that are likely to result in Democratic congresspeople. There simply aren’t enough Democratic voters.

So the Republicans want to use this as an excuse to change ballot initiatives once they pass! If you can win… cheat!

 

Hey! I have a simple solution that does not involve a change to the state's Constitution. It is real simple, if there are problems with what the voter passed, tell the voters what the problem are and offer a new ballot initiative that corrects the problems and let the voters to decide. But the Republicans don't like that answer because the voters still might not vote the way the Republicans want.