people power
✷
people power ✷
Take back people power
The Problem
In 2018, we passed three initiatives. We legalized medical marijuana (Prop 2), we expanded Medicaid (Prop 3), and we created rules for fair election maps (Prop 4). The legislature’s response was to overrule each of these measures with its own, weaker versions, and then they made it even more difficult to do citizen-led ballot measures. In other words, when the legislature didn’t like the results, they overruled the people and changed the rules.
Utahns are fed up with the legislature overruling the will of the people. Currently, the people of Utah do not provide a significant check to the power of the Utah legislature. We cannot amend Utah’s constitution, and the legislature has shown that it will do everything in its power to quash our ballot measures.
① Give citizens the right to amend the Utah Constitution
Utahns do not have the right to amend the Constitution. We should change that. We are the boss of the government, not the other way around.
I will fight to amend the Utah Constitution to establish a process for citizens to amend it.
Lawmakers will be less able to ignore the people’s priorities. The people will be able to bypass the complicated bureaucracy to get stuff done. The people will be able to check politicians' abuses of power.
② Institute Ranked Choice Voting for all Elections
In Ranked Choice Voting (or Instant Runoff), you rank the candidates based on your preference. If no one receives a majority of the first-choice votes, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated, and their votes are transferred to those voters’ second choices. This process is repeated until someone receives a majority of the votes.
According to a Gallup poll in October 2025, 62% of Americans said they see the need for a third party, but only 15% say they are very likely to vote for a third party. RCV fixes that issue. RCV means your vote for a third party doesn’t get wasted.
If you believe the two-party system needs to end, please join me in fighting to establish RCV in Utah.
I will fight to transition all Utah elections from plurality voting to Ranked Choice Voting.
RCV means that the winner has support from the majority of people; it increases voter turnout, discourages negative campaigning, incentivizes candidates to appeal to a wide variety of people, and decreases partisanship. Under RCV, third-party candidates do not take votes from the two mainstream party candidates, making them more likely to gain support.
③ Ban Gerrymandering for Good
Partisan gerrymandering is when a legislature draws maps to favor one party over another. For example, the state legislature had split Democratic votes among the four congressional districts, making it impossible for Democrats to gain any representation in Congress.
Remember that we voted to end gerrymandering, yet the legislature has tried everything in its power to continue to gerrymander to stay in control.
The legislature has shown that we cannot trust it with redistricting power. Instead of focusing on the real crises Utah faces, they are distracted by power.
Utahns support fair maps; it’s time the legislature gets in line and stops gerrymandering.
I will fight to amend the Utah State Constitution to clearly direct an independent commission — rather than the state legislature — to draw the maps.
My plan enables the legislature to focus on helping Utahns rather than on political redistricting fights.
④ Ban Corporations from making Political Contributions
In 2010, the US Supreme Court issued a ruling, Citizens United vs. FEC, that declared that political spending is a form of protected speech under the First Amendment. Since then, outside spending has exploded. Citizens United is why you see more ads, more political videos, more mail, and more people knocking on your door. This is why politicians are bought.
Utah is one of the few states that has no cap on how much corporations can contribute to political campaigns, but we can do more than cap it. We can get rid of corporate money in politics altogether.
I will put forward a constitutional amendment that will prohibit corporations from contributing to political elections in Utah, using the design from The Transparent Election Initiative in Montana.
Language like this will remove loopholes in the law and make it clear that corporations are not people and do not have the rights that people do.
Our representatives will be funded and representative of us, the people. Less money will be spent on politics, meaning voters will not be inundated by as much political material.