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House passes temporary election date change to restore party convention week
Summary
The Utah House passed Senate Bill 1,001 (election code date changes) on Sept. 16, 2019, moving candidate certification back and setting the 2020 primary for June 30 to avoid conflicts with party conventions and the Fourth of July weekend.
SALT LAKE CITY — On Sept. 16, 2019, the Utah House unanimously approved Senate Bill 1,001, a narrowly targeted change to state election dates designed to restore a week for political parties to hold county conventions and to shift the 2020 primary to June 30.
Representative Elison, the House sponsor, said a change in the previous session had moved candidate certification earlier and inadvertently forced larger counties to hold conventions on Easter weekend or a weekday. "The single best solution to accommodate everyone was to simply move the candidate certification back to where it was to allow the parties an extra week to have their conventions and then simply move the primary date back a week to allow the clerks the extra time they need to process all the ballots," he said.
Elison described the change as a "simple fix" that balances clerk processing needs and party access to conventions and said it preserves distance from the Fourth of July weekend so turnout should not be affected. The House moved the bill under suspension of the rules and placed it on the third-reading calendar; with no additional floor debate the bill passed by voice and was recorded as 66 yes, 0 no. The bill will be signed by the speaker and returned to the Senate for the president's signature.
What's next: The House clerk will process signatures and transmit the measure back to the Senate; implementation details and the effective date were not discussed on the floor and are "not specified" in the transcript.
