Laboratories of Autocracy, Utah-Style

A Brutal Combination of Anti-Democracy Tactics, All in One State

When I first called gerrymandered red states “Laboratories of Autocracy,” I wasn’t trying to be cute. And I wasn’t exagerrating.

It’s exactly how these corrupted statehouses and states operate. Just ask citizens of Ohio. Or Missouri. Or North Carolina. Or Florida. Or Indiana.

The same pattern plays out in all of them: 1) extreme gerrymandering empowers extremists to hijack the power of that state’s government, 2) they ram through policies that do not reflect the will of the people of that state (often, the opposite); but 3) they are so locked in, it’s nearly impossible for the people to throw them out.

A second pattern is that they are always learning and borrowing from one another’s worst tactics. They truly operate as laboratories, serving a national right-wing agenda by harnessing state power.

But there’s a third pattern that has also emerged: the closer the people get to overthrowing those who’ve hijacked these states, those in gerrymandered power don’t back off. They actually fight harder. The more desperate they are…the closer they come to losing the gerrymandering that seals them off from the people—the more aggressively they engage in lawlessness, lies and outright abuse of the government power they wield.

That sounds like heated rhetoric, I know. But the following examples show it’s no exaggeration:

The people of Missouri experienced this when they voted to end gerrymandering by ballot initiative a few years back. The legislature simply ignored the change and overturned that reform two years later. Gerrymandering remains in Missouri. And as we speak, a politicized judge (looking to be the state’s next Attorney General) has stopped a referendum to protect reproductive freedom in its tracks.

North Carolina saw this as well. It’s been one of the worst gerrymandered states for years. When an independent State Supreme Court emerged as a check on legislative power, the gerrymandered legislators attacked the court itself, changing the rules for court elections. Over time, this has eliminated the court as a check and balance. This also allowed legislators to defy a state supreme court decision striking down their gerrymandered maps long enough for their new friendly court to get seated. And voila, their gerrymander also remains (a supermajority, no less).

Ohio has experienced a combination of these tactics.

First, after voters twice voted to amend Ohio’s Constitution to end partisan gerrymandering, legislators simply defied the new Constitutional rules and multiple Court rulings to stay in gerrymandered power. As a result, they currently sit in districts that violate the Ohio Constitution, and keep attacking democracy from those illegal seats.

As in North Carolina, when the Ohio Court merged as a threat to their lawless work, they changed the ways Ohio judges are elected to assure that partisan allies would win judicial positions. That essentially ended the Court as an independent check in November 2022.

Now, with citizens having placed a new Amendment on this year’s ballot (the referendum would place the districting process in the hands of a citizen commission), the corrupt GOP leadership is only doubling down on its abuse of power. The reform measure is on the ballot this November as Issue 1, and voting “Yes” would enact it. But GOP officials have manipulated the ballot language to leave the impression that voting “No” ends gerrymandering, and voting “Yes” advances gerrymandering. No surprise, at the same moment that Orwellian ballot language emerged, the campaign arm of the GOP began amplifying the lie that voting “No” ends gerrymandering. (in other words,. the “No” campaign is essentially writing the ballot language).

And just last week, we saw Florida engaging in gestapo tactics to try to stop a referendum on the ballot this November.

So yes, this is a national strategy, playing out through statehouses and other state offices. And when the people actually get close to ending gerrymandering or reversing decisions by gerrymandered politicians, the resistance grows only more fierce. And lawless. And dishonest. And abusive of government power itself.

Utah Takes Its Turn

Given these patterns, what I’m about to describe happening in Utah should not be surprising. But….the extent of the lawlessness playing out there is still stunning. Like Ohio, almost all the tactics I’ve just described are coming together in one state, at one time. Scared to death that their gerrymandered power is at risk, Utah’s legislators are grabbing multiple pages from the “Laboratories of Autocracy” playbook at once:

Background: Utah Supreme Court Stands Up for Citizens

In 2018, the citizens of Utah rallied to do something about gerrymandering. They approved a ballot initiative to ban partisan gerrymandering, and to empower an independent panel of citizens to lead the districting process (even though the legislature would approve the final map).

But in an all-too-familiar plot twist, when fair maps actually emerged from that new law, the gerrymandered politicians simply repealed the entire process, stripped the power from the new commission, and rammed in place their own gerrymandered map.

As one story described: “The Legislature repealed the “Better Boundaries” commission process in favor of its own. In 2021, lawmakers approved a map that divided Salt Lake County, which Joe Biden carried by 11 points in the 2020 election, among the state’s four congressional districts. Lawmakers ignored a map drawn by the commission…”

The new process, enacted by the voters of Utah, be damned.

Fortunately, the statehouse was taken to court for these actions. And in a historic and nationally significant opinion, this July the independent Utah Supreme Court unanimously found that when Utah’s legislature directly undermines a citizen-enacted initiative, it violates the state’s Constitution:

“We hold that when Utahns exercise their right to reform the government through a citizen initiative, their exercise of these rights is protected from government infringement…..This means that government-reform initiatives are constitutionally protected from unfettered legislative amendment, repeal, or replacement.”

Crisis over, right?

If you’ve been watching the statehouses like I have, you know the answer is….no. Remember: the closer they come to losing their grip on power, the harder those in gerrymandered power fight back. And that Supreme Court decision has unleashed a ferocious backlash at multiple levels.

Three steps are playing out at once:

First: Weaken the Power of the People

In response to the ruling, the Utah legislature called an emergency session (yes, they think it’s an emergency that they may have to compete in fair districts and be held accountable by voters!) to place its own new initiative on the Utah ballot. If passed, it would “give lawmakers constitutional authority to significantly rewrite voter-approved ballot measures or repeal them entirely.”

That’s right—as in Ohio last year, they’re asking the voters of Utah to weaken their own direct democracy power by allowing gerrymandered politicians to overrule their will. And this would no doubt mean they would gut the anti-gerrymandering amendment the Court just protected from their interference.

My first instinct is that this should go about as well as what Ohio politicians tried last year (trying to raise the threshold of passing amendments to 60%)—losing 57-43.

But that’s before I tell you about their next trick…

Second: Manipulate the Ballot Language

Ohio voters will recognize the second maneuver pulled by the Utah legislature, which is to use deceitful ballot language to fool voters into stripping away their own power.

As of two days ago, the official ballot language asking Utah voters’ to strip themselves of their own direct democracy power reads as follows: should the Constitution be amended…

“to strengthen the initiative process by prohibiting foreign influence on ballot initiatives and referendums [and ] clarifying the voters and legislative bodies’ ability to amend laws”?

“Strength”? By giving the legislature after-the-fact veto power over successful citizen-led initiatives?

Outrageous, right?

Now who wrote such a misleading summary of the issue?

Believe it or not, the legislators themselves. In Utah, the very Utah House Speaker and Senate president who pushed the initiative are also the ones who get to write the ballot language describing their handiwork.

Why them?

Because just months ago, the Utah legislature passed legislation stripping the power of writing the ballot language from those who used to write it—nonpartisan legislative attorneys—and placed it into their own highly partisan and obviously biased hands.

In sum, those in gerrymandered power not only want to to strip power from their own citizens. They have strong-armed for themselves the power to write the ballot language summarizing that maneuver. And wielding that new power, they are presenting ballot language to fool citizens into thinking they are “strengthening” their initiative power when they’re actually nullifying it.

Third: Attack the Court

Ohio and North Carolina voters will also recognize the third response by the Utah legislature to being held in check by an independent court: a frontal assault on the Court itself.

The legislature is now vowing to take on how the Justices of the Utah Supreme Court are selected. (Currently, these are non-partisan figures, nominated by the Governor, approved by the Senate, and face retention elections every 10 years). No surprise, the same tactics used to eliminate independent courts in Ohio and North Carolina are being discussed.

The Lesson: They Are Terrified of Fair Democracy, Even in a Republican State

Ok, that’s where things stand for now. As in Ohio, there is a new court case challenging the deceptive ballot language in Utah. Hopefully justice prevails there. And we can only hope the voters of Utah see through their politicians’ cynical and dishonest quest for power at their expense.

If you want to help the effort in Utah, visit Better Boundaries (HERE), the group that’s been boldly leading this effort to clean up the state.

But think about all I’ve described for a moment.

We all know Utah is a Republican state.

So why would a GOP legislature act in such an extreme way when they’re pretty much assured of being in control either way?

Same reason this happens in other states. This is not merely about partisan control.

It’s about control by a narrow faction of the extreme right, and the interests who back them, who know full well that their policies are out of touch with the people of these states—even when these states are decidedly Republican.

They also know that extreme gerrymandering is what sustains their extremism (and, often, corruption). And as we’ve seen from Kansas to Ohio to Kentucky, they know that if the people are able to weigh in through fair elections, much of their extreme agenda will be rejected.

So they work feverishly to avoid those fair elections at all costs—whether they be efforts to undo gerrymandering or statewide ballot initiatives.

Folks, this is just the latest example of the non-stop, state-level attack on democracy.

There’s no sugarcoating the fight we’re in.

We must see it. Get involved. Study their playbook and be prepared for it all.

And never stop.

And the closer you get to victory, know you have to buckle down even harder.

But the harder they fight back, know too that that means you are on the right track. You are getting much closer to success.

So, like Better Boundaries is doing, keep going.