When I started interviewing state Rep. Ray Ward, R-Bountiful, this week about his bill that would drastically lower the number of signatures a candidate would need to get on a primary ballot in Utah, I had one thought in mind.
How would Utah handle elections with all those candidates?
One year ago, Utah Republicans faced the names of four candidates on the primary ballot to replace Mitt Romney as the party’s nominee for U.S. Senate. In the race for the third congressional district, party voters faced five choices.
With five on the ballot, someone might win with a little more than 20%. Would that be considered legitimate?
How would Utah handle elections with all those candidates?
One year ago, Utah Republicans faced the names of four candidates on the primary ballot to replace Mitt Romney as the party’s nominee for U.S. Senate. In the race for the third congressional district, party voters faced five choices.
With five on the ballot, someone might win with a little more than 20%. Would that be considered legitimate?
If his bill passes, I asked him, shouldn’t the state adopt a runoff or ranked-choice system for declaring a winner if no one gets a decent percentage of votes (whatever that is)?
But he stopped me cold.
“This would not be a weird way to do things,” he said. “If we make this change, we would take Utah to the average of what the other 49 states require.
“In other states, if you want to run, you run.”
This is, in fact, true in many states. And, somehow, those states elect people.
In Hawaii, you can run for the U.S. Senate with 25 signatures, which is a quick trip around the block. In Kentucky, you need just two, but only if you’re a Republican or Democrat. Unaffiliated candidates need 5,000.
But on the other end of the scale, Florida requires 144,419 signatures, or a $10,440 filing fee, whichever you prefer. Personally, I prefer not to have Florida-style politics.
Some states have runoff elections under certain circumstances. Others don’t.
Utah right now requires candidates either to be chosen by party convention delegates or to collect 28,000 signatures for a statewide race such as senator or governor, 7,000 for U.S. House, 2,000 for a state Senate office and 1,000 for a state House seat.
Ward’s bill, HB193, would lower that to 1,000 for senator or governor, 500 for U.S. House, 200 for state Senate and 100 for state House.
His argument for this could fit on a bumper sticker: “It should be difficult to win a campaign, but it should not be difficult to try.”
If you have ideas that resonate with your friends and neighbors, and a desire to serve, you should be able to sign up to run. Once you’re a candidate, you can see if those ideas are good enough to raise money to pay what it takes to spread your ideas. And you can see if your speeches and door-to-door campaigning resonates.
Ward’s bill runs counter to the desires of some lawmakers who want more, not less, party control over who makes the ballot. Some want reinstate the caucus/convention method as the primary means to obtaining office. In a recent op-ed to the Deseret News, several lawmakers said signature gathering overall creates “an excessively cumbersome and costly nomination process, with plenty of room for error.”
They refer to a performance audit of the signature verification process that found Gov. Spencer Cox might have fallen short of the number of valid signatures needed to make the ballot, even though his signatures had been verified as sufficient.
But the “cumbersome and costly” process is complicated by rules that allow voters to sign only one candidate petition per race, which requires many candidates to hire signature-gathering companies and to race to be the first in line for signatures.
Utah’s dual path to the ballot was a compromise more than a decade ago that kept voters from retiring the caucus/convention system entirely through a ballot initiative.
Ward told me he thinks voters should be allowed to sign as many petitions as they want. It doesn’t commit them to vote a certain way. It just expresses their belief that a person ought to be on the ballot.
He also isn’t opposed to a runoff election or some other means of resolving multiple-candidate races so that someone wins a majority of the vote.
But neither of those things is in his bill. One change at a time, he said.
“I didn’t want to complicate this. I have a steep enough hill to climb as it is.”
The steep climb to election reform may be well-trod by the time this legislative session is done.
But he stopped me cold.
“This would not be a weird way to do things,” he said. “If we make this change, we would take Utah to the average of what the other 49 states require.
“In other states, if you want to run, you run.”
This is, in fact, true in many states. And, somehow, those states elect people.
In Hawaii, you can run for the U.S. Senate with 25 signatures, which is a quick trip around the block. In Kentucky, you need just two, but only if you’re a Republican or Democrat. Unaffiliated candidates need 5,000.
But on the other end of the scale, Florida requires 144,419 signatures, or a $10,440 filing fee, whichever you prefer. Personally, I prefer not to have Florida-style politics.
Some states have runoff elections under certain circumstances. Others don’t.
Utah right now requires candidates either to be chosen by party convention delegates or to collect 28,000 signatures for a statewide race such as senator or governor, 7,000 for U.S. House, 2,000 for a state Senate office and 1,000 for a state House seat.
Ward’s bill, HB193, would lower that to 1,000 for senator or governor, 500 for U.S. House, 200 for state Senate and 100 for state House.
His argument for this could fit on a bumper sticker: “It should be difficult to win a campaign, but it should not be difficult to try.”
If you have ideas that resonate with your friends and neighbors, and a desire to serve, you should be able to sign up to run. Once you’re a candidate, you can see if those ideas are good enough to raise money to pay what it takes to spread your ideas. And you can see if your speeches and door-to-door campaigning resonates.
Ward’s bill runs counter to the desires of some lawmakers who want more, not less, party control over who makes the ballot. Some want reinstate the caucus/convention method as the primary means to obtaining office. In a recent op-ed to the Deseret News, several lawmakers said signature gathering overall creates “an excessively cumbersome and costly nomination process, with plenty of room for error.”
They refer to a performance audit of the signature verification process that found Gov. Spencer Cox might have fallen short of the number of valid signatures needed to make the ballot, even though his signatures had been verified as sufficient.
But the “cumbersome and costly” process is complicated by rules that allow voters to sign only one candidate petition per race, which requires many candidates to hire signature-gathering companies and to race to be the first in line for signatures.
Utah’s dual path to the ballot was a compromise more than a decade ago that kept voters from retiring the caucus/convention system entirely through a ballot initiative.
Ward told me he thinks voters should be allowed to sign as many petitions as they want. It doesn’t commit them to vote a certain way. It just expresses their belief that a person ought to be on the ballot.
He also isn’t opposed to a runoff election or some other means of resolving multiple-candidate races so that someone wins a majority of the vote.
But neither of those things is in his bill. One change at a time, he said.
“I didn’t want to complicate this. I have a steep enough hill to climb as it is.”
The steep climb to election reform may be well-trod by the time this legislative session is done.
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