Deseret News articles of November 20 and November 23, 2024, report that Representatives Ryan Wilcox (R-Ogden) and Jordan Teuscher (R-South Jordan), among others, are proposing bills in the next legislative session that would fundamentally change the primary election process in our state.
A bill which reportedly passed the House in 2023 but never received a Senate vote would allow candidates who receive a supermajority of votes at the state convention — say, 70% to 80% — to skip the primary election and go directly to the general election as the party’s only nominee, thus eliminating all primary opponents, even those who gathered sufficient signatures to qualify for the primary election ballot.
In my view, this is not right. Party nominees to the general election ballot should be elected by all the voters of a party, not just by the few voters who serve as delegates to a party’s state convention.
In the Republican Party, for example, there are approximately 1,000,000 Utah voters and only 4,000 delegates to the Utah Republican Party State Convention. The right of every qualified elector to vote is precious. Please do not disenfranchise the 996,000 Republican voters who are not delegates to the Republican State Convention.
Nathan Carl Tenney
Perry