In a piece that ran on Monday, Tribune columnist Robert Gehrke wondered whether the Utah Legislature’s redistricting maps, “as adopted, effectively disenfranchise [Utah] voters who are not members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.”
“The maps “cracked” the main concentration of non-LDS voters in the state (Salt Lake County) across four congressional districts, neutering their voting power.”
Utah has always had a religious divide, but now more than ever that divide is under pressure.
In his 2019 book, “Utah Politics: The Elephant in the Room,” (pun intended), writer Rod Decker described a unique split in Utah politics: “Latter-day Saints tend to vote Republican, and non-LDS tend to vote Democratic.”
Currently, there is only one non-LDS Republican in the Utah Legislature. No other state electorate is more split along religious lines than Utah. This religious divide — “the proverbial elephant in the room”— “is the most important fact about Utah politics,” Decker argues, and “it determines political outcomes.”
LDS members have always been the majority in Utah. So, when they began lining up behind one political party in the postwar era, this concentrated and amplified their political power. Meanwhile, Democrats/non-LDS were devastated. Utah voters have never (directly) elected a non-LDS U.S. senator, and last elected a non-LDS governor (J. Bracken Lee) in 1952 and a non-LDS U.S. Rep. (Karen Shepherd) in 1992.
The real supermajority in the 2021 Legislature — even bigger than the GOP supermajority — was LDS members, the Tribune reported last January. They are overrepresented at 86% of the total seats for all members. All of Utah’s statewide elected officials and representatives in the U.S. Congress are LDS. Even the recent seven-person redistricting commission included only one non-LDS member.
This is happening at the same time the LDS share of the Utah population — currently pegged at between 50% and 60%, sources differ — is declining, due to factors that include slowed birth rates, lower member retention and net in-migration of non-LDS. In 2017, LDS became a minority in Salt Lake County.
The democratic argument against LDS bloc voting is just as compelling today as it was at statehood, when LDS church leaders instructed members to stop voting for one party (the People’s Party) and instead spread their votes across both national parties, which they did with precision: Between 1896 and 1972, Utah voters elected 10 Republican governors and 10 Democratic governors. This eased Utah’s integration into the U.S. system of democracy.
James Madison and Alexis de Tocqueville warned of the dangers of unchecked majority rule. A political majority should have diverse interests, which check a tyranny of the majority.
“If a majority be united by a common interest, the rights of the minority will be insecure.” (Madison, Federalist No. 51.) The Utah Republican/LDS majority is united by its shared loyalty to the LDS church, and sure enough, the 40% or more of the Utah electorate that is non-LDS is deprived of any real say in state or federal government.
LDS influence extends far beyond Utah politics, reaching into the key areas of law, banking, real estate, insurance, and education. In the 170-year history of the University of Utah, for example, there has never been a non-LDS president, even though it’s a public institution and only about one-third of the student body is LDS.
Seventy years ago, the U.S. population began shifting from white majority to predominately non-white. The non-Hispanic white population currently stands at just under 60%, and the United States will become minority-majority around 2045. (It’s already there for those under age 18). This roughly mirrors the proportion trend line of LDS in Utah. And just as the populations of six states (Hawaii, New Mexico, California, Texas, Nevada, Maryland) are no longer majority white, at least five Utah counties are no longer majority LDS.
After some zigs and zags, white Californians have settled into cooperative power sharing with Hispanics and other groups. Contrast that with the plurality white population in Texas, which has extended its dominance through anti-democratic measures that include voter suppression and partisan gerrymanders. So far, Utah Republicans/LDS are managing the political effects of their demographic decline more like Texas than California.
Going forward, Utah will continue to diversify, and the LDS share of the population will continue to decline. Utahns must choose what kind of democracy we want for these new conditions. We can have a weaker democracy that maintains LDS supremacy, or a stronger democracy that is based on equal participation for all in a political system that builds the social trust that narrows our religious divide. Political equality will also help to end the reality and perception of many non-LDS that they are disadvantaged in Utah, both socially and professionally.
David Burns
David Burns has degrees in history and law. He lives in Salt Lake City.