When you get a Utah ballot this election, you'll have the opportunity to vote on two proposed state constitutional amendments.
Both were put forward in the 2025 legislative session. Each proposes to change the rules around Utah's citizen-led ballot initiatives.
Here's a breakdown of what Amendment A and B do:
Amendment B
Right now, a ballot initiative passes with a simple majority. Per Utah code, that's if the "number of 'yes' votes is greater than the number of 'no' votes." In its simplest form, Amendment B wants to raise that threshold to 60% on initiatives that introduce or raise taxes in the following manner, according to the state:
- Creates a new tax.
- Expands an existing tax to cover additional items or transactions.
- Increases an existing tax rate.
- Changes a property tax rate in a way that results in a smaller decrease in the property tax rate than would occur under existing law.
Supporters argue that raising the vote count will stop a loud minority from imposing taxes across the whole state.
"This protects the taxpayers, makes sure that they really understand what they're doing as they move forward," Republican Rep. Jordan Teuscher said during a House floor debate in 2025.
Before the proposal was voted forward to appear on the ballot, lawmakers from both sides of the aisle were skeptical of the necessity for such a high threshold. Democratic Rep. Doug Owens said he believed half of Utahns were "as able as 60% to identify a good proposal."
Sixty percent of registered Utah voters is 1.25 million people, so for a ballot initiative to pass in this case, an extra 208,860 voters would have to sign on, assuming everyone votes.
Owens was also concerned that if they enshrine a tax rule in the state constitution, it would be very difficult to undo.
Amendment B does not change the vote requirement for other initiatives, but not everyone is convinced that B is truly about taxes.
"They're using taxes kind of as a scare tactic to get people to vote yes, when in reality, it's about consolidating power, making it harder for us to exercise our constitutional right to use ballot initiatives," said Elizabeth Rasmussen,the executive director of Better Boundaries.
Ballot initiatives have had a spicy last few years in Utah. In 2018, an anti-gerrymandering and redistricting ballot initiative, Proposition 4, kicked off a near-decade-long saga that resulted in court-ordered redistricting and a likely safe blue seat in Congress centered on Salt Lake County. It's something that has notably upset Republicans in the Legislature.
"Honestly, I mean, ever since Prop 4 was passed in 2018, we've seen attacks on ballot initiatives that have passed, and the process itself," Rasmussen said.
Theoretically, if a higher threshold would have been applied to Prop 4 or any of the other 2018 ballot initiatives, legalizing medical marijuana and expanding Medicaid, they would've failed. Prop 4 won by a narrow 50.3%, medical marijuana by 52.7% and Medicaid expansion by 53.3%.
For Republican Rep. Casey Snider, raising the passing vote count on tax-related initiatives would protect rural Utahns who he said pay the consequences of urban-focused ballot initiatives.
"Rural Utah lives in fear of suburbia, and it's not because you're ill-intentioned or anything like that, but it is because there are more of you than there are of us," he said on the House floor in 2025. When it came to the three 2018 initiatives that have sparked so much debate, Cache County, where his district is, voted no.
Amendment A
Amendment A is focused on how the public is alerted to proposed constitutional amendments and initiatives.
Currently, the amendment language has to be published 60 days before the election in a newspaper in every Utah county that has one. That language has been a constitutional requirement for transparency for the last 130 years in Utah. Again, it comes back to redistricting.
In 2024, lawmakers tried to give themselves the power to appeal or change citizen-led initiatives like Proposition 4 through Amendment D. It never made the ballot after the Supreme Court voided it because the Legislature did not publish the amendment appropriately.
Now, lawmakers want voters to pass Amendment A so they can scrap the newspaper requirements and decide how and where to publish as they see fit.
On PBS Utah's Oct. 4 Hinckley Report, panelist and Republican Rep. Neil Walter said newspapers are obsolete and the ballot initiative is about modernizing the system.
"There has to be a new way to meet the requirement for notice and disclosure to residents," he said. "We're moving online, which is where people are."
Fellow panelist and director of the Leavitt Center for Politics and Public Service at Southern Utah University, Mary Weaver Bennett, disagreed. She said many rural communities still rely on their hometown paper.
If voters approve Amendment A, HB481, a companion bill passed in 2025, would take effect. That statute would require the lieutenant governor to publish the text of amendments and ballot questions on the Utah Public Notice website 60 calendar days before the election.
Both amendments will be on ballots statewide. Voters can learn more about what's on their ballot with the state voter information pamphlet. Election day is Nov. 3.
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