Clean Elections for Utah

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History of Utah's Nominating Process & Signature Gathering

This information is extracted from the research of Layne Beck. Listen to his talk on this subject on Rumble.com.

History of the Nomination and Voting Process

Thomas Jefferson and other of the nation’s founding fathers believed we should have organizing “wards” or “small republics” that govern at the smallest level possible. Utah’s founders organized themselves in a way similar to that ward system and created the caucus and convention system without partisanship. As a condition of statehood, Utah had to adopt the national political parties.

In 1936, Herbert Maw did not win the governor Democratic Party nomination by that party’s delegates. In 1937, he successfully pushed for a direct primary for Utah. He became governor in 1940.

The direct primary lasted one decade. Voter participation declined dramatically and the cost of campaigning rose substantially. Because the people demanded it, the legislature brought back the caucus-convention nominating system in 1947.

At the time, there was no state-sponsored party voter registration. Caucuses at the time were called “mass meetings.” Voters went to the mass meeting of the party they felt most aligned with.

From the time the caucus-convention was brought back through the 1960’s, Utah experimented with convention nomination thresholds. For a while, it was somewhere between 70% and 80%.

“Mass meeting” became “caucus” in the Utah law in 1988.

There were several court cases that covered the states governing how political parties could run their processes internally. These cases tended to favor the parties over the states. In 1993, Utah repealed statutes still on the books still governing political parties.

Partisan voter registration was introduced. Politicians started going to very wealthy people to get them to donate to their parties.

In 1996, Democrats moved their convention nomination threshold to 60%. Republicans did the same in 1999.

Running for a third term in 2000, Mike Leavitt was forced into a primary election. Leavitt was booed at convention. He was furious that he was forced into a primary. When he resigned in 2003, Olene Walker replaced him. She lost convention in 2004.

In 2010, U.S. Senator Bob Bennett lost convention. His vote on the TARP bailouts from 2008 was a major factor. Mike Lee and Tim Bridgewater went to primary – Lee won the primary. Convention thus successfully unseated a U.S. Senator. Utah was one of the few states to do so, due to an intact caucus-convention system.

The fallout from Bennett’s loss was that the Utah political class was furious that convention delegates could bounce them out of office. It put pressure on the Utah GOP to raise the convention threshold in order to force primary elections. According to that class, the delegates were “out of touch” yet the same caucus-convention system had previously elected Leavitt, Bennett, Huntsman, and Hatch. They were labeled “out of touch” because Olene Walker, Chris Cannon, and Bob Bennett lost.

Then the political class registered a Political Interest Committee (PIC) called “Alliance for Good Government” more well-known as “Count My Vote” (CMV).

Orrin Hatch saw what happened to Bob Bennett in 2010 and saw the writing on the wall for his 2012 reelection campaign. (He was already 6 terms in.) Hatch spent over $5 million before convention and packed caucuses with his supporters. Hatch then spent another $5 million to win the primary.

CMV is “the uniparty.” It was funded by Orrin Hatch, Mitt Romney, Mike Leavitt, Gail Miller, John Huntsman Senior, and some other ultra-wealthy people (e.g., lobbyist Spencer Stokes, who was Mike Lee’s first chief of staff.)

Mike Leavitt wrote an op-ed, published in 2012, about changing Utah’s nominating system to a direct primary. It stated that if the parties refused to go along with it, a ballot initiative would be filed. The uniparty raised $850,000 to fund the initiative. The Utah GOP SCC passed a resolution calling on the state legislature to leave the party process alone. The uniparty filed an initiative to eliminate the convention system in favor of a direct primary election. However, they came up short of the required signatures to get it on the ballot.

SB54 - Candidate Signature Gathering

To get around the CMV push, Dan McCay and Kurt Bramble sponsored SB54 in the 2014 legislative session – candidate signature gathering to work around the caucus-convention system. They gave the CMV uniparty group everything, including unaffiliated voters voting in primaries – something CMV did not even ask for.

McCay and Bramble promised the Utah GOP SCC that SB54 will be non-severable, i.e., if one part of the bill is rejected, the entire bill is rejected. That was on Saturday. By Monday morning, that promise was broken.

The Utah GOP was afraid to respond to the CMV initiative attempt or to push back against SB54. SB54 passed in 2014. GOP leadership sued to stop SB54 but did not succeed. It lost in the 10th Court of Appeals. The dissenting judge suggested taking it to SCOTUS. SCOTUS did not take the case.

Gary Herbert and Spencer Cox told the SCC they wanted the courts to decide the case, then filed a 35 page brief with SCOTUS stating why they should not take the case.

SB54 now “forces” a direct primary just about every time.

The Consequences – Ambiguity in Laws

There is nothing in any laws or any party documents that states a convention nominee MUST be primaried against signature gatherers.

Signature gathering gives Utah a back entrance to install political candidates, making you think you have a choice.

The Consequences – Buying Political Influence

People now buy political influence by funding signature gathering for candidates. Professional signature gatherers, rather than volunteers, collect the signatures.

We had four candidates on the 2024 primary ballot for U.S. Senator. This was whittled down from ten going into convention (the rest either not having won convention or not having gathered enough signatures for the primary ballot.)

Three of the primary candidates gathered signatures. The other one was the convention nominee, who did not gather signatures.

Mike Kennedy, a 2024 convention nominee for U.S. House, went up against signature gatherers and actually won the primary. He should never have been forced to go to a primary.

The Consequences – Verification Inconsistencies, Lack of Transparency

Signature gatherers you encounter might be gathering signatures for multiple candidates. One might be a statewide candidate, one might be a local candidate Who verifies what has gotten complicated. Normally, a county clerk verifies a signature for a local race. Historically, the Davis County clerk has contracted with the state government to verify signatures for statewide races. In such a case, a signer’s signature would be checked by two different verifiers – and the two verifiers might come to different conclusions – one signature valid, one invalid.

GRAMA requests to check lists of signers for consistency in verification have been met with denials and roadblocks.

(I was told) entire packets were rejected for the Restore the Flag Initiative because one signature was invalid.