Letter to the Editor: Utah’s caucus system: A misnomer

By Macade Jensen Elmo

The caucus system used in Utah to select party candidates rightfully belongs to the various parties individually, and not to the state. Thus, the misnomer.
County-wide and state-wide political parties are created by groups of like-minded people voluntarily collaborating their efforts to elect candidates to various offices. Utah, as a state, does not create parties.
Due to the very nature of what a political party is, a coalition of people carrying out a goal and championing certain issues, the government does not establish a party’s bylaws, dictate its stance on issues, oversee which offices it runs for, outline when a party should meet, nor prescribe any other similar actions.
Reason concludes, then, that the government has no authority to dictate how a party shall select its candidates. Rather, only citizens belonging to such a party should have any bearing on the selection of, or system used to select, a party’s candidate.
Despite the equality of this school of thought, last years legislation passed a bill (think SB54) which failed to understand a political party for what it is: a voluntary coalition of like-minded people, or a subset of people. Instead, the legislature must have believed parties to be a coalition of the entire state; else, why would they have granted to the government any authority to regulate a party’s proceedings.
No, SB54 should never have passed the legislature due to the fact that governments should have no authority over a political party’s inner workings. As a corollary, the Utah GOP, which had no voice in the discussion on Capitol Hill last year, is entirely justified in suing the government in order to establish their control over their party’s proceedings.
Nevertheless, it may be true, and objectionable to some, that the current caucus system employed by the various political parties of this state favor candidates with extreme views, even though the party’s majority views may be less extreme.
Thus, if a problem is foreseen, the people of such a party may endeavor, for whatever reason, to correct, if they deem so necessary, the selection process used by their party (and not that of other parties) from with in the bound of their party through a change of bylaws and procedures. Indeed, such actions may lead to variance in the systems employed by the several parties in Utah. There is nothing wrong with this since the parties themselves champion different principles and have different goals. After all, a party is formed to fulfill the collective member’s desires and a party is should be sustained only when it accomplishes this.
In summary, I opine that SB54 is an unjust bill and is rightfully being taken to the court system to determine if the legislature has granted unjust authority to the government to regulate parties’ procedures. Furthermore, if a party’s members sense a problem with their party’s procedures, they, however, are justified in confronting and changing such procedures from within that party as they have the just authority to make such changes.