Aaaargh!

Earlier this month the Utah legislature passed a bill, SB275, that would change the rules for citizen initiative petitions.  It will most likely be signed by the governor and immediately become law.  This bill is obviously aimed at the citizen initiatives for ethics reform and the Fair Boundaries initiative, both of which the Utah Republican party is strongly opposed to.  The new bill would allow the state Republican Party to see the names of those who signed petitions after they are turned in on April 15th, and they would then have until May 15th to contact people and lobby them to remove their signatures from the petitions.

I'm not a user of strong language so all I will say is that this is a piece of garbage bill.  As a citizen, regardless of how I feel about the ethics or redistricting initiatives, I am frustrated and insulted by it.  Firstly, it's extremely unfair to have a deadline for one side of an issue to collect signatures that is a month earlier than the deadline for the other side to remove signatures.  Secondly, this opens up all the people who signed these petitions to a month of harassment from the Republican party trying to get people to change their votes.  I don't like the ethics bill, but I am in favor of the Fair Boundaries initiative.  Man, oh man, if I get a call I'll give them a piece of my mind.

My objection to this, as a usually-more-Republican-than-Democrat citizen, was expressed beautifully by Derek Staffanson on his blog:

One of the central traits of conservatism is a healthy skepticism of government. It is the very nature of government to seek to protect and expand its power, conservative theory correctly asserts. Government should therefore be viewed cautiously. It should be structured in such a way as to minimize the potential for any given government entities to abuse government power, and to subject government entities to accountability.

Except, these conservative government officials seem to believe, when it comes to them. We should just trust them, because they are above reproach. To consider any checks to potential abuse is to insult their integrity.

Just as they did when they attempted to install the school voucher system against the wishes of the citizens of Utah, these Republican legislative leaders show a disregard for the democratic process and their status as representatives of the people.

No system of districting can be perfect. But it is reasonable to try to create a check on the power of the legislature and their incumbents with an independent commission. On such an important issue—and one in which the legislature has such a clear conflict of interest—the public should be able to decide.