The Senate discusses a proposed constitutional amendment related to citizen initiatives during a special legislative session at the Capitol in Salt Lake City on Wednesday, Aug. 21, 2024. (Photo by Spenser Heaps for Utah News Dispatch)
During the Democratic National Convention, when top Democrats were out of town, Utah’s Republican-dominated legislature pulled a fast one on the citizenry and rushed into an emergency special session to vote on a constitutional amendment to limit the initiative power of the people. The details of the amendment weren’t available until the day before the session. The Legislature refused to allow more than a few minutes of public input on the bill, and also decided to make their autocratic amendment retroactive, like those ex-post facto laws that are prohibited in the U.S. Constitution.
Why such an emergency, you ask? Because the people of the state are humbly hoping to be able to maybe, possibly elect a Democrat to Congress at some point in the far distant future, if it please Your Honor. This, it turns out, is a terribly scary prospect for the grand exalted rulers of the legislature. Republican east benchers do not want to share power with anybody else anytime soon, and especially not with people who live in the foggy lake bottom of the valley.
The earliest cases of a rogue legislature walking all over the American people happened in the 1700s when England’s parliament was continually overturning laws enacted by the people of the colonies. Those local laws were essentially initiatives and referendums aimed at establishing some self-determination for the colonists. When those smaller laws weren’t allowed to take hold, the people cooked up a much larger initiative by publishing two documents, the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. The Constitution they wrote out in 1787 was essentially an initiative designed to end the tyranny of England’s rogue legislature.
The initiative and referendum process has a hallowed history not only in America, but in democracies from time immemorial, including the ancient Roman and Israelite democracies that our own republic drew its breath from. Those hallowed cultures held periodic “plebiscites” where the ordinary citizens of the realm physically gathered together and voted on important initiatives for their government, like declarations of war and changes in government operation. Their voice was the final say on the matter. In Utah, the Republican oligarchs wish to have the final say, as they did in ancient Greece, for example, when an oligarchy of 30 tyrants usurped power from the people there in 405 B.C.E. and when an oligarchy of six justices granted substantial immunity from prosecution to Donald Trump for his actions while in office in 2017-2021.
It is exactly this kind of concentrated power in the hands of a single-minded minority of leaders that the initiative process is meant to prevent. The Encyclopedia Britannica says, “In the United States, these devices [initiative and referendum] were adopted principally to curb the rule of political party machines and to correct the abuses and inadequacies of inflexible legislatures by granting the people a means to overrule legislative action and to initiate popular votes on legislation.” Utah has only produced a half dozen or so initiatives here compared to dozens or hundreds of them in other states, and Utah’s elite wealthy class still can’t handle even that tiny amount of correction of their monopolistic fever dreams.
To justify pulling this “fast one” on the citizens of Utah, Republican leaders paraded out a spate of sophistries (crazy reasoning) to justify their efforts. One Republican leader said, “Nothing changes,” [with this ballot measure] even when the people lose a ton of power. Another said Republicans are “fighting to preserve the voice of the people.” Another wants to stop the Utah Supreme Court from deciding public policy. Still another says they want to increase government accountability. Yet another says the legislature wants to make things more “flexible.” Another Republican says the people want to introduce “chaos” into Utah society and they must be stopped.
The Utah legislature says they also want to prevent any foreign monetary contributions to the process and any point of view that “undermines our cultural integrity,” i.e., what private sector parties like corporations and churches want for Utah. This, in spite of the fact legislative leaders cannot think of a time foreign money has done this in Utah.
Two states (Arizona and California) restrict lawmakers from changing initiatives. This is for a good reason, as the people of Utah found out when the legislature tinkered with a medical marijuana initiative, a Medicaid expansion initiative, and an independent redistricting initiative aimed at challenging egregious Republican gerrymandering.
There are yet other states where Republicans are trying to pull fast ones on the people as well. This has happened in Delaware and Rhode Island, where popular votes via the initiative process passed overwhelmingly, only to be ignored by legislatures. Indeed, Missouri, Arizona, and Ohio Republicans recently made efforts to undo ballot measures.
The people of Utah are still in a quite feeble position compared to the wealthy Republican elite in the state. That is not likely to change without a lot more continuing education of voters in history, law, and political science. And just where is that going to come from?