Comments about ‘Utah Supreme Court denies citizen resolution place on Salt Lake ballot’

The distinction between public or private opinion polling and government overseen voter opportunities is somewhat illusive. Perhaps when it comes to government-sanctioned "polling" the end result may be more reasonably justified if the ends do have some bright-line of mandatory or legally-binding result if the effort and taxpayer money is to be conducted to obtain voter opinions. Therefore, I would tend to support the Utah Supreme Court decision in this case.

When there is a conflict of legislation and laws then the laws supported by our rights and freedoms shall have presidence. This is the problem with Utah and federal laws, legislation has erased our right to representation and redress of elected officials, its called indemnification which absolve elected officials of accountability and used to keep citizens from expecting representation. This indemnification law has been the backbone law to discriminate against citizens rights.

@My2Cents,

Where I take exception to your argument is when you state that, "[It] has erased our right to representation and redress of elected officials."

Correct me if I am wrong, but it appears to me that you believe the citizens (via initiatives) have a constitutional right of co-equal legislative power.

If so, that is nonsense. There is nothing in the Utah Constitution that says citizens have a constitutional right of co-equal legislative power. Citizens have the constitutional right to elect their Legislative Representatives and Senators; that is it – nothing more. Utah is not like California regarding initiatives.

In this Supreme Court decision, the Court has correctly confirmed that the Legislature has the constitutional power to pass legislation defining the rules on how initiative petitions will be placed on a ballot.