In a brazen move worthy of the Project 2025 playbook, the Utah State Legislature voted this summer to use the amendment process to completely gut the ballot initiative process. The proposed Amendment D would have given the legislature the right to repeal any ballot measure approved by the voters. This was the latest salvo in a multi-year battle between the state’s political elites and people who have come together across the political spectrum to build a more accountable government. Better Boundaries’ Executive Director Katie Wright told the story to Convergence Publisher Cayden Mak–a story that may challenge some of your assumptions about Utah, and about who feels invested in democracy.
Cayden Mak: This story goes back to Proposition 4 in November of 2018, which was about dismantling some gerrymandered legislative districts. Could you give us a little backstory on that ballot initiative?
Katie Wright: In 2018, Better Boundaries Utah led an effort to create an independent [redistricting] commission and voter-centered standards through a ballot initiative in Utah. The initiative was successful and the work was underway, but then the legislature stepped in and undid the will of the people by repealing Proposition 4 and replacing it with SB200, which watered it down. Although we retained the independent commission, both the commission and the voter-centered standards became completely optional.
Cayden Mak: This effort by the legislature was in a lot of ways about preserving their own power and making sure that things stayed in their control. What is the nature of the Utah State Legislature? How do they operate?
Katie Wright: Well, Utah is a supermajority state so every statewide office and our state legislature is controlled by one party, but that hasn’t been enough for them.
They have been accumulating power in incremental and not-so-incremental ways over the past decade. For example, this past session, they took the power to write the ballot language about constitutional amendments away from nonpartisan legal staff and gave it to the House majority leader and the Senate president. They have taken power from other branches of the government or nonpolitical staff and given it to themselves, with a really detrimental impact.
Cayden Mak: It sounds like things would become increasingly politicized as a result of that. I’m curious to know: what are Utah’s demographics and who are the folks who are being gerrymandered out of legislative representation?
Katie Wright: Most people know Utah for our amazing mountains and skiing and our red rock national parks. What they don’t know is that our state resembles the Denver metro area or the Phoenix area in terms of our demographics: 85% of Utahns live along the Wasatch Front and we are the fastest-growing state in the country.
We are also the youngest state in the country, and increasingly diverse. One out of three Utahns under 18 are Latino or biracial. Utah is growing. Our growth is coming from our diversity, and we are young.
Cayden Mak: Could you tell me a little bit about this gerrymandered map and why voters were interested in Prop 4 in 2018? What was the motivation behind that ballot initiative and what that map has meant for the legislature’s past priorities?
Katie Wright: There’s two types of gerrymandering: partisan gerrymandering and racial gerrymandering. Regardless of the type of gerrymandering, the outcome is politicians who are completely insulated from accountability. That speaks to people from across the political spectrum. Almost everyone wants to be able to hold their politicians accountable if they’re not doing the work that people want.
Many issues, from gun safety to funding public education, actually have quite broad support among Utahns of different political philosophies. Yet, we see very little work being done in these areas where there’s agreement, or we see policies put into place that are just on the extreme. Utahns are frustrated that their politicians are unaccountable to them. And that’s very much at the heart of the work we do.
Cayden Mak: What happened in response to what the state legislature did in 2020?
Katie Wright: We had a parallel process where we had an independent redistricting commission and a political legislative redistricting committee. The Utah Independent Commission did their work in a completely transparent way: every time they were drawing maps, it was YouTubed and recorded.
They also kept all of their maps public in draft form. They would travel around the state and take feedback and adjust those maps in response to the needs of people and communities. They did an absolutely wonderful job. And in the final piece of that, a diverse group of commissioners voted unanimously on the maps that they then presented to the legislature, but the legislature completely discarded all of that went behind closed doors and drew maps that were incredibly partisan and very much protected incumbents of all political backgrounds within our state legislature. The people of Utah saw all of this and were not pleased. They gave so much feedback over the course of a weekend that the comment website crashed. The people of Utah have followed this very closely and pretty expertly and have made their displeasure known at every phase.
A couple months after those gerrymandered maps were enacted, the League of Women Voters Utah, Mormon Women for Ethical Government, and a handful of awesome individual plaintiffs, led a lawsuit. It has been Better Boundaries’ pleasure to support that litigation financially and with voter education.
In July 2023, it was heard by the Utah Supreme Court. We received an opinion this summer, July 2024. The opinion was really phenomenal. The five justices were unanimous: when the legislature of Utah repealed Proposition 4, it violated Utahns’ constitutional right to reform their government by ballot initiative.
Cayden Mak: What’s very interesting to me about this story is how much ordinary Utahns are really plugged into the redistricting process. Did that surprise you at all?
Katie Wright: I think it’s the result of a lot of hard work by many of our partners, including the plaintiffs and other key organizations across the state.
I also want to give a hat tip to journalists in Utah that have stuck with this story for many years and covered it in a way that’s accessible to people. Every pivot of this story I have been really impressed with how much this very wonky, challenging topic has become a kitchen table issue across our state.
Cayden Mak: After the state Supreme Court decision comes down what is the legislature’s response?
Katie Wright: The response was swift and very emotional. They said that this strikes at the heart of our Republic and would put our entire quality of life at risk. That was in mid-July and by mid-August the legislature called themselves into special session. This is a power that used to be reserved for the governor.
They called themselves into special session under the guise of a state of emergency and rushed through a constitutional amendment proposal to send to the ballot this fall. Essentially that amendment completely undoes the Supreme Court opinion and the protections that the Utah Constitution has, that we have the right to reform the government through a ballot initiative. This would explicitly amend the constitution to allow the legislature to repeal anything passed via ballot initiative.
Cayden Mak: Could you tell me a little bit about the fight against Amendment D, electorally and otherwise?
Katie Wright: I want to give credit to our awesome partners on the ground who immediately stood up to this. The public hearing was in the middle of the work day on a Wednesday, but we still filled four overflow rooms and had an incredible number of people engaging online. We had less than 10 minutes of public input on the amendment before it was passed out of committee and voted on that evening.
The process was very much behind closed doors. There was very little time for public input or opportunity for the press to see the language, debate the language, and discuss it. People made their disappointment very clear: the following Monday we had a packed rally on the Capitol steps. People were sending letters to their legislators. They were writing letters to the editor before we even had them organized. So the response was equally as swift in terms of the people’s outrage.
Cayden Mak: And the way that the legislature wrote this amendment was fairly deceptive, right?
Katie Wright: Yes. The judge ruled actually that not only was the ballot language deceptive, but it was counterfactual: it said the opposite of what the proposed Constitutional amendment would really do. Up until Amendment D, ballot language had been written in a very concise, neutral, summarized way. This was the first time that the legislature had the power to write the ballot language themselves.
And they took full advantage of that and wrote it in a way to really confuse voters. Everyone read that language and thought “Oh, is there any chance we can win? Because this is not the truth, and will be very hard for the average Utahn to unpack.”
Cayden Mak: As you just mentioned there was a lawsuit about this amendment and its language. Could you tell me about that?
Katie Wright: The plaintiffs in the gerrymandering case filed a complaint about the deceptiveness of the language and how the process was so rushed. In fact, the legislature had to change election timelines to be able to do this – it violated its own statute, so they had to create a new statute to get this on the ballot in time.
The judiciary took this on very quickly. It was first heard in a lower court, and that judge ruled that the language will appear on the ballot, but be voided, meaning votes on the measure will not be counted. Ten days later, the Utah Supreme Court heard the appeal and ruled the day of oral arguments that they were upholding the lower court’s decision. What the Utah Supreme Court said is that the legislature has not properly submitted this to the voters because the language is so misleading and that they missed the technical timeline.
Cayden Mak: Congratulations for getting this voided. It seems like a really big deal. I have to ask, what do you think is going to come next? Because it sounds like the legislature is unlikely to give this up.
Katie Wright: I think it’s really important that we hadn’t had affirmative cases or opinions that explore the rights of voters in Utah, but now we have two unanimous Utah Supreme Court opinions affirming and making explicit the rights we have as voters. This is absolutely monumental for our state.
The next step has been transparent from the legislature, which is to attack the judiciary. Legislators have been attacking Supreme Court Justices’ merits and how they were appointed. We have already made sure that in all of our strategic plans we have expanded our mission to not just protect our right to ballot initiatives or to fight gerrymandered maps, but also to protect our judiciary.
Utah has historically had a merit-based process; that has been undone. But our current justices went through that process and that’s something that we think we need to maintain: courts that are reading the constitution and protecting the rights of the people versus a court that allows one branch of the government to really have runaway power. So far, the courts and the people have been a check on that and we think it’s absolutely imperative that we maintain that.
Cayden Mak: Do you think there are lessons that we can learn for folks in other states from these fights that you’ve been engaged with now for seven-plus years? What are some takeaways that might inform other organizations dealing with horribly gerrymandered districts in other states?
Katie Wright: I think one thing that everyone knows is that resources really matter. There have been times in this prolonged fight where people ask, “What are you up to?” because you’ve had a court date but nothing’s happened in a few months as you wait to hear from the courts.
And what we’re up to always is continuing to engage: speaking to rotary clubs, meeting with folks, providing political education, talking about what’s happening in other states. This work takes consistent financial resources, which we get both from grassroots Utahns who send us $25 because they know this fight is important and from other groups that have more financial means. They have to stick with these partners in good times and bad because that consistency is what allows us to fill the steps of the state Capitol in a pivotal moment.
Cayden Mak: Yeah, I think that is so key, and the year-round organizing that anybody does is core to actually being able to win things that people want. Is there anything else that you’d like to tell us about?
Katie Wright: The last thing I’ll say is: sometimes it’s easy to assume that people have a certain philosophical bent or partisan background and they may or may not care about our issue, but what we have found is that many of these principles are deeply held by Americans of all types. They want the government to be balanced and representative. I always try to create openings for people. It’s a really great opportunity for us to find more cohesion in these very partisan times, and that’s been really enjoyable about this work.
Cayden Mak: It sounds like part of what has made you all so effective is that you didn’t make assumptions about who is part of your coalition, which is huge. And it’s more fun. Thank you so much for your time and for telling us a little bit about this campaign and congratulations again on winning this court case.
Katie Wright: I really appreciate the opportunity and I hope that some of what we’ve done in Utah can be used in other states to fight similar battles.