This Is What Politicians Do When They’re Afraid of the People

This Is What Politicians Do When They’re Afraid of the People

Starting Tuesday, December 9, 2025 the Utah Legislature will convene a special session — not to solve real emergencies, but to create political ones. Their goal is simple: rewrite the rules to protect their power. Instead of respecting voters or the principles of fairness and accountability, they’re trying to rig the system before next year’s elections.

There are four major areas they’re targeting:

1. Undermining Checks and Balances

In Prop 4 – the reform Utah voters passed – we made it clear that we want fair maps and fair elections. Legislators didn’t like that. They ignored the voters, the courts stepped in, and now lawmakers are furious. In this special session, they’re attempting to publish a statement attacking the courts and accusing them of overreach simply because judges upheld the will of the people and the Utah Constitution. The legislature is signaling, openly, that it doesn’t trust checks and balances (unless those checks serve them), not to mention the will of the people.

2. Forcing the Courts to Move Fast Only When It Benefits Them

Utah’s legal process is slow and deliberate, and it has taken four years to get even a partial fix to our gerrymandered maps. But now that the courts have ruled in favor of the voters, the legislature suddenly wants lightning-fast judicial action. They’re pushing a law that would force any election-related appeal to skip the normal process and go straight to the Utah Supreme Court. Why? They want to fast-track any effort to undo the ruling that restored fair maps.

They also want to shift legal costs so challenges brought by the legislature don’t cost them a dime, at least initially, while ordinary Utahns who challenge legislative overreach could still face thousands or even millions in legal expenses. It’s a double standard designed to intimidate and silence the public.

3. Moving the Candidate Filing Period — but Only for Congress

This one affects me very directly – I’m currently running in Utah Congressional House District 3 – which is 60% of Utah, geographically.

The legislature wants to move the candidate filing window from January 2–8 to March 9–13 – but only for congressional races. Why? Because they don’t like the new court-ordered map. The old map carved Salt Lake County into four districts guaranteeing four Republican seats and silencing the state’s urban voters. The new map gives Democrats a realistic chance at one seat – and gives rural and suburban Utah more accurate representation.

The legislature is stalling, hoping the Utah Supreme Court or U.S. Supreme Court will issue a “stay” and bring back their old gerrymander temporarily. By delaying filing, they’re buying time while throwing campaigns of all parties into chaos. It’s harder to talk to constituents and harder to plan a campaign when you don’t even know which communities you’ll represent. This isn’t just an attack on one potential Democratic-leaning district — it’s an attempt to make it harder for Democrats statewide to mount effective campaigns in a year when voters are energized and paying attention.

4. Repealing HB267 Before Voters Can

This one seems unrelated at first, but it’s all part of the same playbook. HB267 – the anti-union bill – is scheduled to appear on the 2026 ballot. Legislators know it would fail. And if people show up to vote for workers’ rights and fairness, they will also vote against the legislators who tried to push the bill through – so the supermajority loses power up and down the ballot.

Instead of letting voters decide, they want to quietly repeal the bill themselves. Not because they’ve had a change of heart, but because they’re afraid of Utahns showing up at the polls. They’ve passed damaging policies for years, but this one exposed their strategy too clearly. Their solution is to erase it before they can be held accountable.

This special session will shape next year’s elections and determine whether Utah ever returns to fair representation. We cannot let lawmakers strip away our voice, our power, or our constitutional rights.

Pay attention. Speak out. And vote out anyone who’s more committed to protecting their own power than protecting the people who give them that power in the first place.

Steve Merrill
Candidate for U.S. House, Utah Congressional District 3 (court decision pending)
Steve@vote4merrill.com