SALT LAKE CITY — The citizen initiative petition Count My Vote has asked the Utah Supreme Court to put it on the November ballot.
In a filing with the state’s top court on Friday, organizers of Count My Vote essentially argue that it’s often too difficult to get an initiative through the requirements necessary to get on the ballot. However, it’s too easy to remove signatures from a petition.
“An organized effort by a small sliver of a small minority has the ability to circumvent a significant population interest in having a vote on this,” Rich McKeown, the co-chair of Count My Vote, told FOX 13.
McKeown said the process places an unfair burden on people who want to initiate a ballot initiative. They also argue that voters who do wish to remove their signatures from a petition should have to do so in person or mail it to the county clerk.
Lt. Governor Spencer Cox’s office declined to comment on the Utah Supreme Court petition on Friday.
Count My Vote is the subject of a civil war within the Utah Republican Party. The ballot initiative would allow political candidates to gather signatures or go through the caucus-convention system (as Mitt Romney, Congressman John Curtis and Gov. Gary Herbert have done). A rival group, Keep My Voice, has sought to preserve the caucus-convention system exclusively. It’s led to lawsuits, delegate infighting and nearly bankrupted Utah’s largest political party.
The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals recently refused to re-hear the Utah GOP’s lawsuit challenging the dual path method for political candidates.
If Count My Vote prevails before the Utah Supreme Court, the remedy would be to put it on the November ballot. Already, ballot initiatives on medical marijuana, Medicaid expansion and independent redistricting have qualified to go before voters in November.
Read Count My Vote’s petition to the Utah Supreme Court here:
