SALT LAKE CITY – Among other decisive victories in statewide balloting on Nov. 3, Utah Democrats are celebrating voters slamming the door on a proposed change to the state constitution that would have impacted ballot initiatives.
“Utahns have defeated Amendment B,” the Democrats crowed in a social media post on Nov. 4. “This is a win for Utah voters and our democracy.”
One of two proposed constitutional amendments on the Nov. 3 ballot, Amendment B would have hiked the approval threshold for any future ballot initiative that would raise taxes from a simple majority of 50 percent to 60 percent.
During the recent statewide balloting, Utahns resoundingly defeated Amendment B, with more than 400,000 votes recorded against that measure compared to about 250,000 in favor of the proposed change.
During his recent campaign town halls, Democratic congressional candidate Peter Crosby of Providence branded Amendment B as a deliberate attempt by Republicans in the Utah legislature to prevent the state’s citizens from engaging directly in their government.
“This is a bad amendment with one clear objective — disenfranchising Utahns,” Crosby argued.
On the eve of the statewide election, Utah GOP Chair Rob Axson urged voters to support Amendment B to protect their families from unnecessary tax increases, keep Utah’s economy strong and stand up to special interests that want to use Utah’s balloting to raise taxes.
The Utah Taxpayers Association strongly supported Amendment B, arguing that citizen ballot initiatives aren’t always as innocent as they appear.
Under current law, a citizen initiative can raise state taxes with 50 percent of the vote, plus just one ballot. The UTA emphasizes that statute allows Democrats to use out-of-state money, unions and advocacy groups to sell tax-increasing agendas to Utahns, just as their allies have used dark money to fund legal battles over Proposition 4 redistricting since 2018.
The UTA’s position is that taking more tax money from Utah families should require broad-based voter agreement, not a coin flip.
The big question is whether Amendment B was more about raising taxes or about limiting citizen-led ballot initiatives, according to the non-partisan Utah Civics Project.
The public advocacy group says that while Amendment B supporters focused on the threshold for raising taxes, its opponents worried that a 60 percent threshold would undermine the important citizen initiative right guaranteed by Utah’s Constitution.
For now, however, Utahns’ have seemingly decided to protect that latter right. But questions still remain over how the issue was explained to voters statewide during the run-up to the Nov. 3 balloting.
Recent estimates have suggested that Amendment B fight drew big money to Utah.
The advocacy group Utahns Protecting Our Constitution has admitted to spending more than $3.2 million to defeat Amendment B, with much of that amount coming from out-of-state donors.
The Utah Civics Project is an all-volunteer, non-partisan group that provides bite-sized civics education to help residents engage with state and local governments.