The main take-away of Dr. Murray’s column is that we should do away with citizen initiatives. One basis for this claim is that, according to Deseret News/Hinckley Institute poll, only 32 percent of Utahns claimed to have closely followed the redistricting debate (a more generous reading of the poll would suggest that only 28 percent didn’t follow the issue at all). This statistic leads her to ask, “Why are we ever asking voters what they think about any policy?” and remind us that we are a representative democracy and, as such, should rely on our representatives, “nerdy folks interested in all things politics,” to make such decisions for us.

Following this logic, it would seem we should get rid of democracy altogether. It is well known that a comparatively small percentage of voters have any clear understanding of where their chosen representatives stand on any given issue and rely instead on whether an “R” or “D” follows the candidate’s name when deciding who to vote for. To follow this logic to its end, we should just go back to being a monarchy where our “representatives” make our decisions for us since, according to Dr. Murray, “most people do not have the time or the expertise to follow a political issue of this complexity well … Most people would rather spend their time on probably anything else.”

Even accepting the claim that people are not well informed generally and about how districts should be drawn specifically, there’s a bigger issue at stake, namely, that people who gain to benefit the most from how districts are drawn should not be the ones with the power to draw them. This principle applies, no matter what one’s political affiliation. It’s simply a matter of justice.

This illustrates why we should have citizen initiatives — because our representatives sometimes do what’s in their best interest, not in ours. Many legislators opposed to citizen initiatives have expressed the fear that we’ll be “ruled by initiatives” rather than our representatives, but this just isn’t true. The bar to get an initiative on the ballot is very high — just ask those who wanted to get rid of the new Utah flag.

Dr. Murray argues that if we do not like how legislators draw boundaries, then it is within our power to vote them out of office. This, however, ignores the fact that Utah’s legislature has engaged in redistricting that has made it increasingly difficult to vote out incumbents. For example, the district for my house representative includes the East Bench of Ogden, Ogden Valley, slivers of Mountain Green and Pleasant View, and then has a strange “spoke” down into Harrisville. Why am I being lumped with these distant and disparate areas? Because, once upon a time, this part of Ogden often elected Democrat representatives. And here are the numbers: In 2000, Democrats held 24 seats in the House but lost five after redistricting. In 2011 they held 16 seats and lost 2 after redistricting. Democrats gained a few seats through elections between 2011 and 2022, but then lost three seats when the new political maps were approved in 2022. It just doesn’t make sense to have those with a vested interest in the results of the boundary drawing also to be the ones determining those boundaries.

Dr. Murray also relies on an anecdote about a class exercise in which her students reasoned that Ogden should be placed in the same district as Moab because of their similar voting patterns. What this shows is not the folly of voter initiatives, but the wisdom of Proposition 4 in placing the responsibility of drawing boundaries in the hands of well-informed, independent designates who do not have a direct stake in how boundaries are drawn.

Finally, Dr. Murray ignores the fact that our representatives are already first chosen by a very small number of citizens in the caucuses. When the Republicans closed their primary elections in 2002, they limited the number of voters who could choose their representatives, leaving even more people disenfranchised than before. (According to a Deseret News/KSL poll at the time, two-thirds of Republicans opposed this move.)

And lest you think I’m an embittered Democrat, I’m not. I have been a Republican county delegate, a precinct vice chair, and a candidate for chair of the Weber County Republican Party. I’m a believer in our representative democracy. I believe most of our elected officials want the best for their constituents, but right now, with their supermajority, our Republican legislature needs a check, and citizen initiatives and an independent redistricting committee are two very reasonable checks on their power.

Sylvia Newman, a proud native Ogdenite, is a former faculty member at Weber State University, and current freelance editor and writer.