Jason Perry: On this episode of "The Hinckley Report," a historic court case has major implications for the future of Utah's congressional districts.

The effects of President Trump's Big Beautiful Bill hit the Beehive state, and our panel weighs in on the major headlines of the summer.

announcer: Funding for "The Hinckley Report" is made possible in part by the Cleone Peterson Eccles Endowment Fund.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Jason Perry: Good evening and welcome to "The Hinckley Report."

I'm Jason Perry, director of the Hinckley Institute of Politics.

Covering the week, we have Doug Wilks, executive editor of "The Deseret News"; Leah Murray, director of the Olene Walker Institute of Politics and Public Service at Weber State University; and Max Roth, anchor with Fox 13 News.

So glad to have you with us, this is season ten of "The Hinckley Report" and we had a lot happening this summer.

We're gonna try to break that down a little bit today thanks to you and your expertise, some of the stories you saw, but I want to talk first about an issue that we're reading about in the paper right now.

One with huge implications for our congressional districts, for the state of Utah, our representation, and also what's going to happen with the courts?

That, of course, is redistricting.

Doug, let's start with you for just a moment on this one, and I want to start with the root of this, which is the Utah Constitution itself, which says that the legislative power is vested in both the state legislature and the people through the initiative process.

It goes to this idea of a co-equal power, and that's at the heart of what we're talking about right here because redistricting was connected to Proposition 4 in 2018.

Doug Wilks: Well, first off, congratulations on tenth season.

It's great to be with you, I think we all feel that way.

This is an issue that's risen on the federal level and on the state level.

You have Texas and California.

It's all about power, in some ways, but in the constitutional framework, the people have a right, through an initiative, process to put forward laws, to put forward policy.

We're a representative government, which means it's not a pure democracy.

You do want representatives to be able to debate and change laws, but the controversy here is if there's a proposition or an initiative that deals with government and government structure, the people have a right to do that without the government changing its own government structure.

So that's where the test is.

If you have a different kind of initiative that deals with policies, and there's been certainly many of those--medical marijuana, other things that were in place--the legislature certainly has a chance to tweak and make a better law, but in this case, the courts ruled the people have a right in redistricting to set up how they're going to be governed and that's what this is about.

Jason Perry: So, Leah, it's a very interesting position here because you start talking about reforming your government, which are the words on--that the court ruled on, on this initiative, and you have this idea of what, you know, the legislature passes these laws.

Most legislators don't pass a piece of legislation thinking that it's always going to be exactly as it is.

Talk about how that relates to what's happening with this reforming your government through the initiative process which has a huge amount of significance, and maybe that's what carries the argument.

Leah Murray: Yeah, I mean, I think the conversation's about redistricting, right, because that is what the lawsuit was, but for me, as someone who grew up in a state that did not have initiatives, so I know you're from California and they had initiatives and Max is from Utah and there are many initiatives.

We didn't have that.

So to me the most interesting question here is why can't the legislature make decisions about policy going forward?

The Constitution's saying that people have coequal power, you know, but the people are not in the daily churn of these conversations and so I'll push back a little bit and I do apologize.

So the conversation on medical cannabis altered the structure of government.

They had to create regulatory agencies to do so.

So I'm not sure, for me, the redistricting is interesting, we should talk about it, but for me it's more about this is a vulnerability in an initiative system, this question being raised.

Max Roth: You know, I think there's this circular thing happening on two levels, and one of them is when we're talking about the Constitution, there's the real conundrum of people being vested with authority that can then constitutionally, I mean, I don't know how else to read the Constitution, can then be taken away immediately by a legislature that does not agree with what that vote said.

And but then on the other level of this, and I think the real crux of what's happening, is that issue with redistricting where you say you want voters to pick their leaders, not leaders to pick their voters.

And when you have a situation where the people want one thing and the legislature so clearly does not, then clearly the legislature and the people are on different pages.

There's a, you know, if you have a popular vote that says more than 50% of people want this and the legislature overwhelmingly says no, then what does that say about where the legislature is compared with the voting populace?

And that's where people I think are frustrated nationwide is that they're, if--you don't get to choose your elected official, you get to choose where you live and then the elected official is gonna to be who they are.

Doug Wilks: Can I just mention California has problems and the initiative process in California doesn't work in my opinion.

If there's too many, the people aren't informed and you can see the weaknesses there.

I think here we have a very specific role for the public.

The legislature needs to be able to legislate, absolutely.

It needs to be able to protect Utah, whether that's from social ills like gambling, which they have successfully done, or something else and make good decisions.

But as it relates to the government and the government structure and we can interpret whether one thing is or the other.

That's, I think, what the courts are weighing in on, like the people have a right to say, look, we want this and we want it unencumbered by legislative change, and even now the legislature will be able to come back and conform to what proposition it was for, right, has to say.

So now you have--bring together and try and get the best law you can.

So in no way should the initiative process and the legislature's right and need to legislate.

I just think they need to coexist and with the layer of power which we see like out of Texas and California and with what President Donald Trump wants to do, Donald Trump wants to preserve the majority with Congress and the executive branch.

I'm going off on a different tangent, but so there is a control issue on the one hand, but there's a legislative effort on the other.

Leah Murray: And can I just pick on both of them for a second and say the whole lawsuit was then only about Congress.

So if it's really about the districting and if it's really about the legislature coexisting with a Prop 4 which said they shouldn't be allowed to write their districts without a commission, then why are we not redrawing all of the districts?

Why are we not talking about school board districts, legislative districts?

We're only talking about congressional districts which to me read so much like the drama nationally with Texas and California, so we're not actually having a conversation.

Max Roth: Well, yeah, but this this precedes all of that though.

So you know this controversy in Utah existed well before Texas and California started talking about this redistricting and the national map after Trump's election.

Proposition 4 was passed before all of that and the legislature changed Proposition 4 before all of that.

And so what we're experiencing now, there's got to be a pragmatic side to it too as well.

I mean if you want to change something that quickly, you change the simplest part of it.

I mean, you pick the part that you can change that quickly or it's or the change isn't gonna matter.

If it's a--if this is a complex lawsuit, the last years, the 2030 census comes.

Doug Wilks: Jason, you have a solution, what's the solution?

Jason Perry: Well, let's talk about what things are going to happen.

So let's talk about what the solutions might be for just a moment because the legislature has been directed by Third District Court Judge Dianna Gibson to submit some maps and based on some parts of Proposition 4, namely some of the key provisions that were in there that were passed, what these lines should look like, and I want to ask you a moment about this underlying philosophy because some of it gets down to this is a very simple approach to this.

Is it should it be a pizza or should it be a donut?

Which is where our legislature is talking about just a moment, because they will, they may submit new maps that may just challenge this in court as well, but talk about whoever's interested in this particular one, why the legislature seems to be still looking for that pizza approach to how they carve up the congressional districts.

Doug Wilks: Well, I live right in downtown Salt Lake City, and you have districts that go, you know, from Salt Lake all the way down to the southern border of Utah.

So the question in your pizza is, is that appropriate?

There's an argument to be made that you get a more moderate legislator because you're dealing with urban areas, rural areas, and that collectively can lead to good governing.

On the other hand, is it a control issue and rather than have Salt Lake, which tends to be more liberal minded, certainly there's a Democrat for a mayor and has been for a long time.

And you have perhaps a little different urban sensibility.

Should that be somewhat contained or in the donut, as you say, or does that lead to worse government?

And that's an opinion, and you can see both sides to that.

Leah Murray: Yeah, I mean, I have a real problem with the pizza system, so I will just say right now that makes every district in the state, Salt Lake City is the most important city, and I know I'm sitting here in Salt Lake City and you just said you lived here and so maybe it should be.

Doug Wilks: I don't think it should have a greater voice than someone in St. George.

Leah Murray: Right, a little bit I'm thinking St. George is always going to be a younger sibling to Salt Lake in a pizza district.

So I would like a different way of districting that acknowledges that there are population centers outside of the Wasatch Front that probably need some attention as well.

Max Roth: You know, I'm surprised because I think that it actually takes Salt Lake City out of the picture, and that's the whole point is to, when you split this very clear blue blob in Utah that's in that donut hole, when you split that four ways, then it doesn't have any impact on who's elected.

It's--and then the other thing, when you talk about some of the common sense stuff.

You can go to Mill Creek, the city of Mill Creek, and at 39th South and about 23rd East there's a little ditch.

They call it a canal, but sometimes it has water, sometimes it doesn't.

It's there's mud, separates a couple of houses and the district split three ways right there in the middle of Mill Creek and then ten blocks down the next district, which is not split there, splits with two of the districts in one spot.

And so is Mill Creek the epicenter of Utah and is there a reason to separate Salt Lake County--which does have some cohesive political identity-- is there some reason to split it four ways that doesn't have to do with making sure that identity isn't expressed?

Leah Murray: Yeah, but even to your point right there, it might dilute partisan power, but every single one of our members are talking about the Great Salt Lake.

No one talks about Lake Powell except for Celeste Malloy, and that's because she's located, okay, yeah, but, and I don't want to get into water, but like a little bit, it feels like all of the issues of the day center on the Wasatch Front.

So even if the argument can be made that we've diluted democratic power.

The conversations about what the interests are and what the issues are absolutely centered here.

Doug Wilks: You do have a lot of conservative people in Salt Lake City.

My neighbors, my family, you have people who are very conservative who feel like, well, we don't have a voice, and thank goodness we have some voice here with this district.

On the other hand, is it a--can you control what comes forward and what doesn't?

Well, we are a one-party state.

The Republican Party has a tremendous amount of control.

So if you believe that this is all a control play, then you're pretty dis--you disagree with it.

If you believe it's a representative play, you have a different point of view.

Max Roth: There is, when you look at the way a donut split tends to happen-- you grew up in Utah, I grew up in Ogden, so I always thought, okay, Ogden's kind of the capital of northern Utah.

You know, north of Salt Lake, Ogden's central, and south of Salt Lake, Provo's entral, and the donut has Ogden and northern Utah, and that's--that kind of makes sense.

You just look at the map and you get it.

And then Provo includes St. George and all of southern Utah.

Now, you put St. George in with Provo, St. George is a big city and it has a voice in that district, so yeah.

Jason Perry: Let's get into something just as, just as interesting.

A big bill was just passed this summer.

I want to talk about some of the implications for the state of Utah.

It was called the One Big Beautiful Bill, and there were several provisions in there that impacted us here in the state of Utah.

Talk about that for just a minute, Doug.

Doug Wilks: Well, first off, I would ask what's in a name?

Is it a Big Beautiful Bill?

Well, that that characterizes it a certain way.

When Democrats were in power, they had a bill and they called it the Deficit Reduction Act, which didn't reduce the deficit.

Is this a beautiful bill?

Some will say yes, some will say no.

What it did is it extended the tax benefits, and so if that didn't pass, you would feel it.

Average people would feel it, rich people, poor people would feel it.

So the fact that those taxes weren't changed is beautiful for a lot of people.

There were other benefits to it.

There was some Social Security tax benefit, not as widely spread as it was perhaps put forward, but there was some benefit there.

Nevertheless, we have a debt and a deficit that is huge, right?

You have $35 trillion.

We have Social Security and entitlements that are gonna collapse unless something's done within ten years.

So Elon Musk flooded the premises, one, because the electric cars were not--no longer there was a subsidy or a credit for that and nobody dealt with the deficit and the debt that we seem to have.

So, mixed results, but I think overall Utahns would support this bill.

Certainly the legislators did.

Jason Perry: Leah, talk about the people you were talking to on both sides of this thing because it did extend those tax cuts.

There were a couple of campaign promises from President Trump in this.

No tax on tips, overtime, car loan interest, things like that were in there, but talk about that balance because as Doug was just mentioning, this was the argument.

Some of these things are happening, but there is still a deficit side to this.

Leah Murray: Yeah, and a little bit, Jason, it's like, where are the deficit hawks, you know, gone, right?

So I'm just going to say I thought my last read on that debt was like 36 trillion high that I've been rounding up to 37 trillion, which is maybe hyperbole, but there's no conversation.

Yeah, I mean, like, we did not address deficits, we didn't start paying down the debt.

So, great, we have tax cuts, but in the long term we're kind of mortgaging our future so that it feels good today.

Yeah, and I'm just not persuaded that's beautiful for anybody.

Jason Perry: Go ahead, Max, and maybe talk for a minute too because there was a rescission package connected to this as well, which there were cuts in several things including public broadcasting.

Max Roth: Yeah, yeah, and it's, and there is that clawing at power and rescission is a way to say that the executive has the authority to not spend money that was appropriated.

And so he can take back money and that's so USAID would fit into that which we talked about earlier in the year and then public television we are at Utah's most prominent public television and in the same place, public radio station.

And this is and real world impacts, and those of us in the media sphere respect what happens in public TV, public radio, see a certain way that they can get into depth that is not available in other places that are dependent on ratings and advertising revenue.

And so there are important things there.

I do take Leah's point too though is that when a Democrat's in office, there are a whole lot of people who are very worried about the debt.

And as soon as they take office, we get big tax cut bills.

That was with George W. Bush and it's been with President Trump as well.

Now this is a continuation of tax cuts, but there's nothing in this that comes anywhere near paying for what they're spending.

Leah Murray: Right, and my problem with the rescissions package and like you asked earlier.

The promise and on President Trump's website was we are canceling funding to the biased media that is PBS, so it was not an argument made.

We should not be paying for public broadcasting or we need to cut funding because somehow we're going to address this $37 trillion debt.

The argument was we think they're biased and so, then, out the window they go.

I have real problems with that.

Jason Perry: Let's move on for just a moment to another interesting issue.

We have a comment from President Trump on the state of Utah and some things happening here in the state as well.

Let's talk about mail-in ballots.

This is something we've talked about through the legislative session that several bills were touching this.

Utahns, by and large--we'll go through some of these polling numbers that we've done with "The Deseret News," Doug, but Utahns tend to like mail-in balloting, but I want to read a tweet from what's on Truth Social from President Trump about what he would like to see happen in the state of Utah and let's see where we might go.

And, Doug, we'll give you this question after I read this.

This is from President Trump on Truth Social.

He said, "I'm going to lead a movement to get rid of MAIL-IN BALLOTS, and also, while we're at it, Highly "Inaccurate," Very Expensive, and Seriously Controversial VOTING MACHINES."

Mail-in ballots.

Doug Wilks: Look, Utah, before there was any controversy, if you will, about mail-in ballots, Utah was at the forefront of saying we don't have good turnout in Utah.

What are we gonna do about it?

Well, we need to make it easier for people to vote, and that would include elderly folks or it might include a single mother home with children, who can sit at her kitchen table, look at the issues and and mail in a ballot, and that succeeded in increasing the turnout substantially.

And there was more representation, it worked, it was convenient and it was successful in Utah, which had time enough to do it correctly.

So to suggest now that we should get rid of all mail-in ballots is trying to solve a problem that certainly doesn't exist in Utah.

And the question is, are there places in the nation where mail-in ballots need to be addressed?

It's not a bad thing to look at balloting and whether things are happening fairly.

But I think it's not a strong, good solution for Utah certainly.

Jason Perry: Let's talk about the Utah solution, Leah, because I want to give you another quote from our lieutenant governor here in just a moment, but it's very interesting because we've talked a little about states' rights versus the federal government who has a say in some of these, and we did get a response from Lieutenant Governor Deidre Henderson to that post that goes directly to the state of Utah, and this is what she said.

"The constitutional right of individual states to choose the manner in which they conduct secure elections is a fundamental strength of our system."

She kind of went to this idea that it's the states that are supposed to do this.

Leah Murray: Yeah, and she's right.

I couldn't agree with her more.

Constitutionally, federalism is a thing, sorry, President Trump, and states get to decide the manner of their elections.

And a little bit, I went to workshops back in 2013--up in Ogden--about how we were going to pilot vote-by-mail because certain municipalities and we were counting were doing that and those were local conversations and we all thought that was a great idea.

That's the way this is supposed to happen.

States should decide what is best for their people and the way that they do elections, you know, and she's right to clap back.

Max Roth: And it's an accidentally ingenious system to thwart people stealing an election, especially on the national stage.

How do you steal an election in which you would have to hack every county in every state where there are systems in place that are spread out across our vast country and in every locality they're looking at this.

And the people who look at it, they're the county people who are elected.

It's George down the street, you know, it's in a big county it's not George down the street, it's, you know, Sally in the next city over.

But it's, you know, there's that local aspect makes our elections more secure.

Jason Perry: It's interesting, let's just do one or two polling numbers that Hinckley Institute did with "The Deseret News," Doug.

In 2024, in that primary election, 97% of voters in Utah used mail-in ballots to do that vote; 89% going to the election before that said they were confident that the state and local governments would conduct a fair and accurate election.

Kind of put those two things into context for us, where Utahns seem to like it, trust it, but it might not be part of the national narrative.

Doug Wilks: Well, it's part of what Max says.

It really is a protection when you go county by county and your neighbor is at the voting booth, and it's an incredibly strong way for social engagement.

So whether you're reading ballots and opening them up and then comparing signatures, all that is the civic process that just builds trust in America and the elections both locally and nationally.

I think overwhelmingly Utahns approve it.

I think Deidre Henderson is correct.

Again, I think it's right to have oversight, it's right to check your processes, but overwhelmingly there is not a problem in Utah.

And with all 50 states having to do this, it's incredibly difficult.

It would be incredibly difficult to steal an election.

Leah Murray: And I just wanted to elevate too.

Utah does that track-my-ballot feature, right?

So and I think voters really like that as well because I can say, I get a text: "Your ballot was received by this county."

You get a text: "It's now been processed."

So we all know every stage what's happening with our ballot.

Max Roth: People are believing, people are believing the, what's being put to them that this is not trustworthy, that this is easy to hack, and that these things aren't in place.

And the reason I say that and I--this is not scientific at all, but the primary election day I went to a local voting place and I talked to the people who came.

There weren't many people, you know, for a municipal primary.

But I--so I wound up interviewing four people and three of them thought that mail-in balloting had to end because it is so easy to corrupt and not as reliable as other forms of voting.

And they were wholly on board with that idea.

And I don't see the evidence for that.

And I just wish that we were--we could agree on facts.

Jason Perry: In our last couple of minutes, this is a little bit of a recap of the summer also.

I'd just love to hear one or two big stories that you have been following, want to catch our viewers up on.

Doug, you have something?

Doug Wilks: Yeah, there's a couple, but one is about the Olympic movement and Utah gearing up.

It will be the Utah Games.

Salt Lake City still has a role, but there was a sense, and we talked to Governor Levitt, Governor Herbert, Governor Cox, just looking at from the very, from the beginning.

There is more of a global look for Utah because you have different communities in Utah, some of which perhaps felt underrepresented the first time around in 2002.

So we're looking at the Olympics and how that proceeds, and then if you're looking at what happens the next year, vaccinations now with what's happened this week, I think will become a very big issue, and you don't want that to turn as political as it seems to be.

You'd really like the, the medical leadership in that space if vaccinations are needed because if they go away, I'm not sure quite what happens.

Jason Perry: Those are some big stories which we'll continue to follow.

Leah.

Leah Murray: Yeah, my favorite story actually is House Bill 267 and the response to it, and a little bit I will just tease and say when you have firefighters showing up and saying they're angry, everybody loves firefighters, right?

So the answer is that referendum gets huge numbers and we'd started the show talking about initiatives.

Jason: Explain that really quickly: better talk about the bill.

Leah Murray: Yeah, so, right, it is, you know, kind of--how do I say?--constraining the ability to collectively bargain on the part of public employees, which includes teachers, firefighters, police officers.

And so you get a response from the initiative environment that we have in our state basically saying we don't like this, we would like to overturn it.

And that's a place that I feel the legislature misread, right, how fast that referendum got the signatures--or initiative, excuse me--got the signatures it needed, how quickly that moved.

I think the legislature misread love for those public service communities, so that's one of my favorite stories.

Jason Perry: I predict we may see that on a special session in the very near future as they try to--try to look at that one.

Our last 60 seconds, Max.

Max Roth: Yeah, you know, I was thinking, when you talk about different election integrity issues, one in Utah that Utah has tried to approach to figure out how to get candidates that maybe are more in the middle is ranked-choice voting, and it looks like that's going away in Utah.

The pilot programs are ending.

And I wonder if we've really looked closely enough at how that worked and whether it's effective because people are trying to find a solution to this polarization and when we get potential solutions it seems like they just go away.

Jason Perry: To this ranked-choice voting, Leah, it's interesting because we had several counties, several places that were using this, a little thought about that in the last 15, 20 seconds.

Leah Murray: Yeah, it was like 22 municipalities were piloting it and I think Max's point's on point.

We did not ever actually look to see if it worked, but what we were hearing anecdotally was it affected that polarization.

People were kinder, campaigns were better.

Jason Perry: Which was the argument behind it.

Thank you so much for your great insights on this first episode.

We are grateful for it and thank you for watching "The Hinckley Report."

This show is also available as a podcast.

Thank you for being with us.

We will see you next week.

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