- Do you support or oppose the Independent Redistricting Commission and Standards Act that Utah voters approved in 2018? Please explain your reasoning.
- Yes. In order that we have fair and representative elections we need to have districts that represent the populations. Independent Redistricting Commissions are the first step in ensuring that we have fair and competitive elections. The federal government should also expand the number of districts across the US so we are better represented. In 1930 census after the congressional seats was set to 435 by the Permanent Apportionment Act. Each seat represented around 280,000, today they represent 760,000. We need to triple the number of seats to get back to that level of representation.
- What should happen when the legislature disagrees with a map the commission produces, and what would you do in that situation?
- The legislatures job is a pick a map, not to draw a map. The independent Redistricting Commission should provide 5 or more maps that meet all the legal requirements and the state gets to choice one of these maps. They can not chose none of the maps and bring their own.
- Do you support Utah's vote-by-mail system as it stands?
- I live in Davis county and I really appreciate the vote-by-mail system. The system is secure, accurate and convenient. I especially like that I can get text updates to know my ballot has been received and counted. The state has made a couple of changes to the vote-by-mail system that should be repealed. Requiring the last 4 digits of your id does not provide any meaningful security benefits and should be removed. We should continue automatic mail ballot beyond 2029 when they are set to expire and should allow the counting of ballots that have been postmarked before election day.
- What would you do to encourage more people to vote who currently don't vote?
- Automatically register citizens to vote, we do it for the draft we can do it for voting.
- One of the cheapest and interesting incentives I've heard of would be to implement a voting lottery where each election 1 lucky voter wins a million dollars. This is incredibly cheap compared to the overall cost of running an election, but would make voting much more exciting.
- Utah voters can put questions on the ballot through citizen initiatives and referenda. Should the threshold for passing them be changed? Why or why not?
- I am okay with bumping the threshold from 50% to 51% maybe 52% in exchanged for making the processes of getting initiatives on the ballot easier. We should not be making ballot initiatives harder to get on the ballot.
- What do you see as the relationship between transparency and corruption?
- A healthy functional organization such as a company will be transparent in its policies and actions. Transparency policies allows the news and citizens to hold the government and their representatives responsible and to expose corruption that would otherwise be impossible to stamp out.
- Does Utah's GRAMA support the public's right to know, or does it need strengthening? Or is it too stringent?
- GRAMA supports the public’s right to know in principle, but it needs strengthening. Recent changes that make it harder to recover costs when the government wrongly withholds records discourage accountability. I’d keep privacy and security exceptions, but restore meaningful incentives for agencies to comply, keep appeals timely and independent, and make sure entities like MIDA face the same transparency rules as local government.
- Describe a specific action you would take in office to make sure every person in your district has equal access to government services and equal protection under the law, regardless of citizenship status.
- Equal protection under the law applies to people, not just citizens. In the Senate, I would push for a clear statewide language-access and non-discrimination standard for state agencies.
- Is there anything else you think is relevant that our questions did not reach?
- _(no response)_
