If there’s one big takeaway from the recent primary elections it’s this: Party conventions are a fundamentally flawed way to nominate candidates. Simply, and I’ve said this before, the conventions are a warped system that continually favors the fringes at the expense of true representation.
It has been fairly obvious for years, going back to when Gov. Gary Herbert was nearly bounced at the state convention in 2016 and when Mitt Romney finished second at the convention in 2018. Both crushed their opponents in the primary.
But this year it was made even more apparent, with a host of convention-backed right-wingers getting trounced by their more mainstream Republican opponents — as my colleague Bryan Schott highlighted last week.
Rep. Blake Moore, who got just 41% of the delegate vote at this year’s GOP state convention, coasted past his opponents Andrew Badger and Tina Cannon, picking up 60% of the vote in the Republican primary.
And Rep. John Curtis, who received the support of only 45% of Republican delegates at the convention, cleaned up with 70% of the vote in his primary against Chris Herrod — the third time he had easily beaten Herrod after twice finishing well behind him among delegates.
Those are the highest profile examples, but not the only ones. State Reps. Melissa Garff-Ballard, Jeff Stenquist and Ray Ward all finished behind their more stridently conservative opponents at their respective county conventions and then flipped the script in the primary.
Ward would have been eliminated at the convention had he not gathered signatures to get on the ballot.
In another example, state Rep. Steve Handy, a 12-year incumbent, didn’t get signatures and lost his seat to newcomer Trevor Lee — although Handy is still considering a potential write-in campaign sparked by a transphobic slur Lee used in a podcast, and a there’s a general belief Lee is out of step with the district.
Maybe this is just revenge of the RINOS. And surely part of it is the substantial advantages that come with incumbency. But it also reveals a basic disconnect.
The delegate pool is more conservative, historically predominantly male and time and again favors candidates outside the party’s mainstream. Ultimately, it puts too much power in the hands of too few zealots.
The risk is that, should those people get into office, the views of the majority of the constituents in that district will not be reflected and the entire point of our representative democracy will be lost.
And don’t think for a second that the signature path to the primary ballot — the firewall protecting the legitimacy of our elections — is safe. As recently as 2021, senators passed a bill to rescind the signature option.
So what’s to be done?
Count My Vote — the group founded by former Gov. Mike Leavitt and responsible for the signature path — wants to make it easier for candidates to gather signatures by significantly lowering the thresholds to secure a spot on the ballot.
Taylor Morgan, executive director of Count My Vote, said that when the signature thresholds were set, it was assumed that unaffiliated voters would be able to sign petitions to put candidates of either party on the ballot. The courts threw out that provision, requiring Republican candidates to only gather signatures from registered Republican voters — making signature-gathering much more onerous and costly.
“They’ve become an impediment to candidates,” Morgan said. “It was never our intention that a candidate for statewide office would have to spend $250,000 to get on the ballot. … These signature thresholds are way too high and we have to address that in order to preserve” it as a viable option.
The initial plan is to work with lawmakers in the upcoming session. Morgan said the group is pleased many of the candidates they supported won their primaries. Nate Blouin, for example, beat Sen. Gene Davis, the only Democrat who voted in 2021 to repeal the signature path, and Sen. Keith Grover defeated a one-time leader of the GOP’s anti-signature efforts.
If legislative efforts fail or there is another attempt to repeal the signature path, another attempt at a ballot initiative — though not preferred — remains on the table.
The parties, of course, will counter that they should be able to nominate candidates how they choose. And granted, it is their party, but it remains our ballot and our elections. We pay for it, we get to set the rules and we can change them if they aren’t working.
Lowering the barrier to the ballot is a fundamental, necessary reform. It could, for all intents and purposes, make these convention circuses meaningless, taking power from the few on the fringes and putting it back in the hands of the mainstream majority where it belongs.
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