The debate over Utah’s Amendment B is often framed as a simple question about taxes: Should it be harder for voters to raise them?
That is certainly part of the question. But Amendment B also raises a more fundamental issue about Utah’s constitutional structure and the power Utah voters have reserved for themselves for more than a century.
If approved, Amendment B would require at least 60% voter approval for a statewide citizen initiative that imposes a new tax, expands an existing tax to additional items or transactions, increases an existing tax rate, or changes property-tax law so that a tax rate decreases less than it otherwise would under current law. Today, those initiatives generally pass with a majority vote. Source: Utah Legislature, S.J.R. 2
Supporters argue that taxes are different from ordinary legislation and that a narrow majority should not be able to impose additional taxes on everyone else. That is a legitimate philosophical position.
But before changing Utah’s Constitution, voters should understand exactly what is being changed—and what is not.
Utah is a republic. But that isn’t the end of the story.
One argument frequently made in discussions about citizen initiatives is that “we are a republic, not a democracy,” sometimes accompanied by a reference to James Madison and Federalist No. 10.
Utah unquestionably has a representative republican government. But Utah’s own Constitution deliberately gives citizens a legislative role that does not exist in exactly the same form at the federal level.
Article VI says:
“The Legislative power of the State shall be vested in” the Legislature and “the people of the State of Utah.”
It then specifically authorizes Utah voters to initiate legislation and adopt it by majority vote. Source: Utah Constitution, Article VI
The Utah Supreme Court was unusually direct about this in its 2024 League of Women Voters decision:
“Under our state constitution, the people’s legislative power is equal to the Legislature’s.”
The court explained that legislators exercise legislative power by passing bills during legislative sessions, while citizens exercise legislative power by voting on initiatives that qualify for the ballot. Source: League of Women Voters of Utah v. Utah State Legislature, 2024
So citizen initiatives are not Utah temporarily abandoning republican government for “pure democracy.” They are one component of the republican system Utah itself created.
Citizen initiatives don’t simply appear on the ballot
Another concern about initiatives is that they bypass the deliberative legislative process.
An initiative does not proceed through legislative committees, floor amendments, substitute bills, negotiations between chambers and a governor’s veto. Once the final initiative reaches voters, citizens cannot rewrite Section 4 or negotiate a compromise. They vote yes or no.
But it would also be inaccurate to describe Utah’s initiative process as lacking scrutiny.
Before a statewide initiative can reach Utah voters, sponsors must file the proposed law with the lieutenant governor. The proposal receives a fiscal-impact analysis. Sponsors must then conduct at least seven public hearings in seven different regions of Utah, with notice provided to state legislators, local officials and the public. Those hearings must provide public-comment time and must be recorded or documented. Sponsors may revise their proposal after receiving that public input. Source: Utah Code 20A-7-204.1
Only then does signature gathering begin.
To place an initiative directly before Utah voters, proponents currently must obtain legal signatures equal to 8% of Utah’s active registered voters statewide and meet that same 8% threshold in at least 26 of Utah’s 29 state Senate districts. Signatures are verified, and the process is governed by extensive statutory requirements. Source: Utah Code 20A-7-201
If the initiative reaches the ballot, Utah’s voter-information materials provide voters with the proposal and information about its fiscal consequences and the arguments surrounding it.
Nor are most initiatives permanently beyond legislative reach
A voter-approved initiative is generally a statute, not a constitutional amendment. The Utah Supreme Court has recognized the Legislature’s ordinary authority to amend and repeal statutes, including initiative statutes, while establishing special constitutional protection when an initiative is itself exercising the people’s Article I right to reform their government. Source: League of Women Voters of Utah v. Utah State Legislature, 2024
Utah law contains an especially clear example involving fiscal estimates. If the final fiscal impact of a successful initiative turns out to exceed the original estimate by 25% or more, the Legislature is expressly authorized to repeal the law, amend it, or adopt a resolution informing voters that they may initiate its repeal. Source: Utah Lieutenant Governor, statewide initiative instructions
So there are legitimate differences between citizen legislation and legislatively enacted bills, but the choice is not necessarily between an adaptable legislative statute and an initiative forever frozen in stone.
Amendment B does not create a universal 60% rule for raising taxes
Utah’s Constitution says an ordinary bill passes the Legislature with the assent of a majority of all elected members of each chamber. Amendment B does not change that rule. Source: Utah Constitution, Article VI, Section 22
Consequently, if legislators propose a covered tax increase, ordinary legislative majority rules continue to apply.
If citizens propose the same sort of tax increase through a statewide initiative, Amendment B would require 60%.
The amendment would establish a 60% approval requirement specifically for statewide citizen initiatives involving certain tax increases, while leaving ordinary legislative voting requirements unchanged.
The proposed language also retains majority rule for local initiatives by voters of counties, cities and towns.
And the property-tax provision is worth understanding because it is a little less obvious than a simple rate increase. Amendment B would also apply if an initiative changed the law so that a property-tax rate decreased less than it otherwise would under current law. In plain English, it includes a change that keeps the tax rate from falling as far as existing law would otherwise require. Source: Utah Legislature, S.J.R. 2
Supporters can certainly argue that those distinctions are justified. But they are important to understanding precisely what Amendment B does.
What does 60% mean in practice?
Supermajorities sound like consensus-building devices, and sometimes they are.
But mathematically, every supermajority requirement also grants additional power to the minority.
Under Amendment B, an initiative receiving:
59% YES
41% NO
would fail.
One person can reasonably describe that as requiring broader agreement before taxes increase.
Another can reasonably describe it as giving 41% of participating voters the power to prevent a law supported by 59%.
Both descriptions refer to exactly the same rule.
And we do not have to rely entirely on a hypothetical to understand what the difference can mean.
In 2018, Utah voters approved Proposition 3, the Medicaid expansion initiative, with 53.3% of the vote. Proposition 3 increased the state sales-tax rate from 4.70% to 4.85% to help fund the state’s share of Medicaid expansion. Had the 60% requirement proposed by Amendment B applied to that election, Proposition 3 would not have passed. Source: 2018 Utah General Election Canvass
The constitutional question is whether tax-related citizen initiatives warrant that departure from ordinary majority rule.
Utah has already used a supermajority rule for one category of initiatives
There is an important precedent that should be part of this discussion.
In 1998, Utah amended its Constitution to require a two-thirds vote for citizen initiatives dealing with allowing, limiting or prohibiting the taking of wildlife, or regulating the season or method of taking wildlife. That provision remains in Article VI today. Source: 1998 Utah Voter Information Pamphlet
So Amendment B would not be the first time Utah has created a supermajority requirement for a particular category of citizen initiative.
At the same time, the comparison raises an interesting question about where Utah uses supermajorities and where it does not.
Utah makes constitutional amendments intentionally difficult to place before voters. Two-thirds of both the House and Senate must first approve one.
But once the amendment reaches the ballot, a majority of voters voting on it can amend the Utah Constitution itself. Source: Utah Constitution, Article XXIII
Amendment B follows that rule too. S.J.R. 2 explicitly provides that Amendment B itself takes effect if approved by a majority of voters. Source: Utah constitutional amendments, 2026
So a majority of Utah voters may change the state’s fundamental governing document and establish the 60% rule, but under that new constitutional provision a future 59% majority could be insufficient to enact certain ordinary statutes through citizen initiative.
Different decisions can reasonably require different voting thresholds. Utah’s wildlife provision already demonstrates that the state has made that choice once before. Amendment B asks voters whether certain tax initiatives should become another exception to the majority-vote rule.
Utah’s initiative process has hardly overwhelmed representative government
Utah voters put initiative and referendum into the state Constitution in 1900, when 71% of voters approved the amendment. Utah was the second state in the nation, after South Dakota, to constitutionally establish the initiative and referendum process. Source: Ballotpedia
There is an important qualification to that history, however.
Utah lawmakers did not provide the statutory procedures necessary for citizens to use the initiative process until 1917, and the process remained difficult enough that Utah’s own legislative history shows the first successful statewide initiative did not occur until the 1960 election. Source: Utah State Archives
California established its initiative process in 1911. California’s own Secretary of State identifies California as the 10th state to adopt the initiative process. Its system became practically active much sooner than Utah’s did. Source: California Secretary of State
So the historical comparison needs some nuance. Utah put the constitutional right to initiative and referendum in place eleven years before California adopted its system, but Utah was much slower to make that right practically usable.
Still, citizen lawmaking is hardly something Utah recently borrowed from California. It has been part of Utah’s Constitution since 1900.
Nor has Utah experienced a flood of successful initiatives.
Between 1895 and 2024, the Legislature referred 192 measures to Utah voters. Citizens managed to place only 28 initiatives on the statewide ballot.
Only 7 of those 28 citizen initiatives passed—a 25% approval rate. Legislatively referred measures, by contrast, passed about 69% of the time. Source: Ballotpedia
Whatever one believes the correct threshold should be, Utah’s historical experience does not resemble an initiative process routinely overrunning representative government.
The real issue is narrower than “republic versus democracy”
Madison’s concerns about factions and protection of minority rights remain relevant to American constitutional government.
But they do not answer every question about Utah’s initiative process.
Utah’s citizens made their own constitutional choice more than a century ago. They created representative government while reserving to themselves a limited power to legislate directly. The Utah Supreme Court now describes that legislative power as equal to that exercised by the Legislature. Source: League of Women Voters of Utah v. Utah State Legislature, 2024
Amendment B does not abolish that power. It changes the voting threshold for one category of its exercise.
Do the existing safeguards for statewide initiatives provide enough protection when an initiative raises taxes, or should those initiatives require 60% voter approval?
Ordinary tax legislation passed by legislators, local citizen initiatives, and even voter approval of constitutional amendments would still require only a majority.
That is the constitutional tradeoff Amendment B places before Utah voters.
