Good morning members of the state house of representatives, state senate, and committee staff.
My name is Rob Latham. I am a lifelong Utahn and resident of Washington County. In addition to being a candidate for elected office and a political party officer, I have also provided legal advice and representation to candidates for elected office.
I have advocated for fair and open elections for more than two decades. I have done that through forums such as these, guest editorials, radio interviews, small group discussions, one-on-one exchanges, and a website called FairVoteUtah and related social media platforms.
Many who prefer fair and open elections favor the replacement of single member districts with gerrymander-proof multi-member districts elected by proportional, ranked choice voting methods. These methods, where tried, have been found to be less polarizing, and more competitive and representative — by allowing voters to “district” ourselves in alignment with like-minded citizens across Utah.
These methods can also save Utah’s taxpayers the cost of drawing lines every ten years, and address concerns about separating communities of interest.
I recognize the limitations that the Utah Legislature has placed on its own redistricting process and the Utah Independent Redistricting Commission.
For example, whereas a federal statute (2 USC 2c) requires the use of single member districts, Utah’s constitution does not require the use of single member districts for the state senate, state house of representatives, or state school board.
The language in Proposition 4 did not require the use of single member districts for those races either.
But the language of this Committee’s self-imposed and self-serving criteria does require single member districts for those races, and that’s a shame.
It’s self-serving because it protects the increasingly distrusted two-party system.
And it’s a self-inflicted wound because not only have the members of this Committee already heard from many Utahns concerned about how single member districts divide their communities. It’s also a self-inflicted wound because of the costs Utahns are forced to bear to draw these single member district lines every time the Legislature engages in redistricting.
However, Utah statutes can be changed. And this Redistricting Committee is not limited by statute in the way Senate Bill 200 limits the so-called “Independent” Redistricting Commission.
I note also that federal statutes can be changed, and the Fair Representation Act has again been introduced in Congress to effect that change.
I commend two articles linked to FairVoteUtah’s website and social media. The first is a recent study by researchers at Cornell University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology showing that the use of multi-member districts comprised of only two members significantly reduces the votes vs. seats “proportionality gap” created by single member districts.
The FairVoteUtah Plan recommends using three-to-five member multi-member districts elected by a proportional ranked choice voting method called the Single Transferable Vote.
The second is titled “In Kansas, the fairest congressional election map might have no lines at all.” Kansas, like Utah, has four congressional seats.
Because of the federal statute I mentioned earlier, neither Kansas nor Utah may use multi-member districts and proportional representation ranked choice voting for congressional seats at this time. But the idea points toward a solution that we in Utah could use for state senate, state house, and state school board seats.
I encourage the members of this Committee to use the opportunity this experience provides to be a voice for more fair and open elections.
As a thought experiment, consider that nested in the 15 state school board districts this Committee will create are five, multi-member state house districts — with five members each — elected by proportional ranked choice voting.
What that could mean in places like Washington County is that Republicans would win four of the five seats. And in places like Salt Lake County, Democrats would win three of the five seats. Maybe in Salt Lake City Democrats would win four of the five seats.
So, still majority rule, but more proportionate minority representation. Northern Ireland elects its legislative Assembly in this way.
I also bring to your attention an online voting platform called OpaVote, which offers a way to use these more-inclusive election methods in our communities, and I encourage the members of this Commission and other audience members to try it out.
I have linked to OpaVote’s website through the FairVoteUtah website and through social media.
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I also noticed that one of the Office of Legislative Research & General Counsel’s presentation slides showed that state senate districts may deviate from the target district size by about 5,000 votes, plus or minus. And state house seats may deviate from the target district size by about 2,000 votes, plus or minus.
To mitigate the over-representation in districts that contain Utah’s two state prisons — and mindful that one will relocate in the coming years from Draper to west of the Salt Lake City International Airport — I ask that this Committee deviate on the plus side for prison districts.
Recall that in Utah those individuals who are incarcerated cannot vote while they are incarcerated. But they are counted. As a result, legislators with a prison within their district have a smaller effective constituency to serve, and for that reason have a disproportionately higher degree of legislative capacity than their colleagues.
This dynamic has been called “prison gerrymandering,” and this Committee can reduce the unfairness of it by, again, deviating on the plus side for those state senate and state house districts.
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I am available for clarifying questions if any Committee member or member of the public has them.
Otherwise, I may respond at the FairVoteUtah website and through social media.
Thank you very much for your time and consideration of my comments.
FairVoteUtah 
“Top Two” is managed political competition: “Would you like vanilla or ‘French’ vanilla?”
“Top Two” is an electoral system-rigging scheme to increase the prospects for political elites with outsized influence in both the government and corporate media by controlling an election’s outcome through limiting which candidates may appear on every Utahns’ general election ballot.
No wonder that Establishment narrative amplifiers would back an initiative to further entrench the power of the incumbent political class.
It’s much easier for the self-dealing, duopolistic, political-industrial complex to muster a plurality of voter support from special interests in a primary election than it is to reach outside of its base of support and cobble together a majority.
If Top Two were implemented, a ten-candidate primary election could advance one of the top two winning candidates to the general election with a single-digit result.
Utah congressman Blake Moore (less than 31%), Utah governor Spencer Cox (36%), and the current members of the St. George city council (less than 15%) all owe their recent general election wins to advancing in the primary election with a plurality vote, not a majority vote.
Majoritarian electoral methods such as ranked choice voting are taxpayer protection measures because they decrease the likelihood that a self-dealing, politically-entrenched plurality will be able to win elections and raise taxes that would otherwise be opposed by a majority of voters. Ranked choice voting is also an election integrity measure because it greatly increases the likelihood that the winner of a single seat election is supported by a majority of voters.
Top Two systems have not delivered the outcomes voters were promised where implemented. In California, where Top Two has restricted voters’ general election choices since 2010, seasoned observers refer to the method as “Same Two” for its failure to offer meaningful choices to general election voters, note that the system has simultaneously lead to greater political polarization and reduced eligible voter engagement, and have joined with many disenfranchised Golden State voters in calling for its repeal.
Some Top Two advocates claim that ranked choice voting is not politically-viable statewide in Utah. Utah is more than halfway through a pilot project started in 2019 to try out ranked choice voting at the municipal level. Although RCV has its detractors — primarily status quo beneficiaries of the political-industrial complex — most Utah voters (and a majority of state legislators who helped pass the pilot project into law) who have participated in ranked choice voting elections favor them.
Let’s give Utahns becoming familiar with ranked choice voting the time we were promised to complete the pilot project so that we may determine whether to join voters in Alaska and Maine by using RCV statewide.
In the meantime, Utahns should get behind real electoral reform rather than enable the Establishment’s latest power grab.
The FairVoteUtah Plan offers a far more competitive and representative way to involve Utahns from all walks of life in our governmental bodies; it’s a proportional way based on election methods that have an ongoing and proven track record in countries such as Germany, Northern Ireland, and New Zealand.