Most people focus on the policy issues that directly affect their lives - public education, health care, transportation, taxes, etc.  These are critical to them, as they should be.  However, they may not realize how much the process of government affects those policy outcomes.

They may not see that unlimited campaign contributions by corporations and wealthy individuals lead to favoritism towards certain individuals, corporations, and industries who have used large campaign contributions to buy access to policymakers, as well as actual policymaker votes.  A large tax break for those who are well off doesn't come because legislators are philosophically opposed to higher taxes, as they often say.  It is typically because these large donors provided them with tangible incentives to vote for those breaks.

People may not understand that making citizen initiatives harder to achieve - as some legislators are doing right now and as legislators increasingly have done for years - means that legislators may go unchallenged in the making of public policy.  Making it harder for initiatives in the future means it will be more difficult to (a) overturn the legislature on a policy issue or (b) force legislation to be enacted that the legislature refuses to act on in areas such as medical marijuana, partisan redistricting, and Medicaid expansion.

In another area, people may not perceive that the partisan nature of county offices means that a candidate for county commissioner, county attorney, or county surveyor has to endure a partisan nomination process to get elected and, once again, to get re-elected.  That reliance on a party's nomination will make that elected official much more sensitive to what that party wants than to what the public generally wants.  So, a county commissioner may turn a blind eye to housing affordability or clean air because he or she is too beholden to party activists who don't care about those issues.

Each of these process elements affects the outcome of policy.  That is why the United Utah Party is concerned about education, health care, transportation, etc., but also knows that it will be easier to achieve good policy outcomes  when the process barriers to those outcomes are removed. 

That's why we are pushing to end partisan redistricting, impose term limits, enact campaign finance limits, take partisanship out of local elections, etc.  We know those barriers to public involvement and the will of the public need to fall before the public - not party and not wealthy individuals and not obstinate legislators - can make policy that is practical, non-partisan, and in the public's interest.

Join us in making the change Utahns want. 

Volunteer at unitedutah.org/volunteer.

Donate at unitedutah.org/donate.

New Volunteer Opportunities

The United Utah Party is looking for people to volunteer for one of two candidate recruitment committees:

• to find legislative and county commission candidates for 2020.  
• to find city council candidates for 2019.  

In both committees, we need a geographical cross section of committee members who can help identify possible candidates across the state. 

Have some ideas?  Interested?  Please write a note to Lexie Corbett at [email protected].