Utah voters across the political spectrum overwhelmingly opposed giving the Legislature the power to repeal or rewrite grassroots ballot initiatives, according to polling by Brigham Young University.
But the survey also found that a majority might have voted to empower legislators to do just that based on the question legislative leaders wrote for the ballot that the Utah Supreme Court said was deceptive and misleading.
“Language does have a very strong impact both on perception and understanding and comprehension on ballots. … Word choice does matter, and words need to be chosen carefully,” said Andrew Vanderwood, a BYU student who worked on the poll. “[And] there might be some people who would take a jab at the Supreme Court. ‘Don’t interfere with this.’ But I think this shows they were vindicated. They were justified to void it.”
The poll, conducted by BYU’s Center for the Study of Elections and Democracy, divided 6,542 likely voters into three groups and gave each a different version of the Amendment D question.
Participants in one group were given a simple question — whether they support a change to the Utah Constitution allowing the Legislature to repeal or amend ballot initiatives. Among that group, 79% opposed the change.
But when voters were given the description of Amendment D written by House Speaker Mike Schultz, R-Hooper, and Senate President Stuart Adams, R-Layton, that appeared on the ballot — depicting the amendment as “clarifying the voters and legislative bodies’ ability to amend laws,” banning foreign influence on initiatives, allowing more time to gather signatures and setting requirements for the Legislature to follow the intent of initiatives — 40% opposed it.
(Christopher Cherrington | The Salt Lake Tribune)
A third version replaced the “clarifying” portion with allowing the Legislature to repeal or amend initiatives, and 53% of that group opposed the amendment.
That Schultz-Adams version was the question deemed deceptive and misleading by the Utah Supreme Court, which struck it from the ballot and said that “not only does the ballot title omit a central feature of Amendment D, but the included language would lead a reasonable voter to believe that the amendment does something entirely different.”
‘Power grab for the Legislature’
BYU political science professor Quin Monson said the data shows the justices were correct in their assessment.
“It was misleading at best, and it looks to me like they purposefully obfuscated the true purpose of the amendment,” Monson said. “The provisions to change other parts of the process were all window dressing to try to get the core part of it, which was a power grab for the Legislature, past voters. And without a campaign to inform voters, the poll showed, it might have been successful.”
For his part, Adams said that had voters learned more about the amendment, he believes they would have not wanted to “allow initiatives to become permanent laws and would have supported it more strongly than the poll suggests.”
“Voters don’t want Utah to become like California,” the Senate leaders said, referring to the large number of ballot measures that regularly end up before Golden State voters. “They are smart and want to make informed decisions based on a clear understanding of the issues.”
But Katie Wright, executive director of Better Boundaries, the group that backed the 2018 anti-gerrymandering initiative that led to the court’s ruling, said the way the issue was presented to voters made it harder for voters to make an informed decision.
“Amendment D’s language, as proposed, would have led voters to unknowingly support a measure contrary to their intentions,” she said. “The polling is not surprising because the majority of Utah voters want to retain the initiative process as a vital check in the separation of powers.”
Although the ballots had already been printed with Amendment D on it, the votes for and against the amendment were not tallied, meaning the BYU polling data is the best barometer to date of the public’s view on the subject.
Vanderwood noted in his research that campaigns for and against the proposal that might have provided voters more information never materialized, because of the court’s ruling. If those campaigns had played out, the numbers would likely have been different. The poll found that the more informed voters were about the proposed amendment, the more likely they were to oppose it.
Katharine Biele, president of the League of Women Voters of Utah, which sued over the misleading language, agrees. She believes voters would have rejected Amendment D as long as they weren’t tricked into voting against their interests.
“Words matter, and that’s exactly what Amendment D has shown us,” Biele said. “You have to be clear, and if they’re clear, the people get a better result.”
The poll shows that there is wide public support for ballot initiatives, she said, and legislators “need to start listening to their constituents.”
“We don’t want the Legislature to be an autocracy,” Biele said. “We want them to be a legislative body.”
Among those given the simplified version of the poll question, opposition cut across the political spectrum, with roughly 74% of those who described themselves as conservative or extremely conservative opposing the change.
“The Republicans are overreaching, and they’re annoying the electorate. Whether the Democrats can actually capitalize on that is an open question,” Monson said. “They’re opening the door, and they seem to want to do it repeatedly, and it’s going to come back to bite them eventually.”
Run-up to Amendment D
Republican lawmakers called themselves into special session and rushed to get Amendment D on the ballot to reverse a July ruling by the Supreme Court that said voters have a constitutional right to enact ballot initiatives that reform government and that the Legislature can’t simply undo or rewrite those initiatives without a compelling reason.
The case stemmed from the 2018 Better Boundaries initiative that sought to create an independent commission to draw political districts and to ban partisan gerrymandering in which districts are drawn to benefit one political party over another.
GOP legislators passed legislation over Democratic objections, removing the gerrymandering ban and making the commission’s maps mere suggestions. They then drew a congressional map that split Salt Lake County into four districts.
The League of Women Voters, Mormon Women for Ethical Government and several voters sued, arguing the Legislature overstepped when it undid the initiative language. The Supreme Court agreed.
With Amendment D stricken and the court’s ruling in place, Republican leaders, concerned that they might see a flood of ballot initiatives pour into Utah, are discussing ways to make the initiative process harder. They have not settled on a solution, but options range from increasing the number of signatures needed to get an initiative on the ballot, requiring support from 60% of voters for some initiatives, or insisting that an initiative get a majority of support from voters in at least half the legislative districts to pass.
Vanderwood presented his research at a recent conference at BYU, where he took second place in the civic engagement category.
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