Utah's arcane caucus system flunks representative democracy by handing veto power to a handful of far-right zealots. 

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Rigged Elections
Utahns like to believe we are exceptional. Unfortunately, our mostly single-party state flunks when it comes to representative government.

In each election cycle, the disconnect gets bigger between what most voters want our government to be and what the state's elected officials actually deliver. A glaring example is the Legislature's transfer of public-school tax revenue to private and home schools. It's not supposed to work like that in a functioning democratic republic.

If those who govern us consistently falter, then a majority of the rest of us could throw the bums out. But in Utah, we can't, and it isn't because of illegal voting, or mail-in ballots.

We have allowed our Republican-dominated Legislature to hand control of the candidate nomination process over to a tiny slice of the Utah electorate: radical Republican zealots. Utah's decrepit and anti-majoritarian nomination system is rigged to limit the average voter's ability to meaningfully participate. Furthermore, its structure guarantees that most GOP voters' preferred candidates will consistently lose to extremist, right-wing candidates in nominating conventions dominated by delegate zealots.

Republican leaders schedule precinct caucuses in venues that are too small to accommodate all registered Republicans. Then they provide little information about when and where caucuses occur. If you participated during the previous election cycle, you might receive an email; if not, then you better hope you drive past one of the three lawn signs scattered somewhere in the neighborhood.

Caucuses occur on weekday evenings, excluding those who work night shifts or those who have kids but no babysitter. They use arcane registration and voting procedures, which rapidly lengthen what could be one-hour meetings to three hours or more. When it's finally time to vote on delegates, complete strangers have one minute to convince you that they are neutral, even though they frequently have a preferred candidate or ideological bias.

In Bountiful's Precinct 32, the school classroom hosting the caucus meeting was filled to standing-room-only capacity, and the meeting ran slightly more than an hour. Most attendees were there for the first time.

Several privately said on their way out, "This is the stupidest waste of time."

They won't return in 2026. That's exactly the way the far-right likes it. In their telling, only they know how to really vet candidates.

Then, alas, there are the conventions. First, conventions are where reasonable candidates—and particularly women—are eliminated. If they fail to get more than 40% of the delegates' votes, then they get the right-wing boot.

Second, conventions are not representative. In 2016, fewer than 25% of convention delegates were women, even though women made up 56% of the overall Republican electorate.

Third, conventions run excessively long. The 2024 state Republican convention held in April ran from 8:00 a.m. to nearly midnight.

Fourth, conventions eliminate delegate accountability, as delegates vote by secret ballot. Caucus advocates are fond of comparing the system to "sound republican representational practice," except that it's not comparable. Congress doesn't vote in secret. Legislators' votes are recorded and are publicly available.

Caucus attendees never know how and for whom their elected precinct delegates voted.

At the 2024 state GOP convention, far-right favorite Phil Lyman, a state legislator from Blanding, trounced Gov. Spencer Cox with 67% of the vote to Cox's 32%. A statewide poll published three days later in Utah Policy showed Cox shellacking Lyman with 81% of the Republican voters at large. The only reason Cox was on the June primary ballot is because he strategically collected 28,000 Republican voter signatures—an expensive undertaking—to ensure a ballot spot.

The idea that a broader group of Republican voters will produce a more representative candidate than preferred by convention delegates drives the zealots crazy, which is why so much heat is generated by SB54, the law that created the signature path to the primary ballot. The far-right constantly agitates to repeal the signature nomination option, because it removes their veto power over primary candidates.

Utah has 990,500 registered Republicans. During the March precinct caucus meeting, fewer than 9% of all Republicans showed up to select 4,000 state convention delegates, 2,680 of whom voted to kick Gov. Cox off the primary ballot. That's three-tenths of 1% of registered Republicans who could have vetoed Cox's candidacy!

Making democracy function better shouldn't be impossible, but the Utah way of rigging elections will continue until either the Legislature adopts direct primaries (don't bet on that) or the backers of Count My Vote sponsor a successful voter initiative to do so. That effort will require generous financing by civic-minded Utahns with deep pockets and broad vision.

Sheryl Allen and David Irvine cumulatively represented Bountiful as Republican legislators for 23 years and have been GOP convention delegates, many, many times. They decry what their party has become.

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