Voters in Utah’s Nov. 21 municipal elections might have noticed something missing next to candidates: political parties.
That’s because in Utah, all municipal offices — think city councils and mayors — are nonpartisan. Meaning that candidates don’t run any political party affiliation. That has its roots in Utah’s statehood in the late 1800s when the United States was experiencing a progressive wave of politics.
“That progressive era was very anti-organized party,” said Leah Murray, director of the Olene S. Walker Institute of Politics & Public Service at Weber State University.
“So imagine you're creating a government and thinking about what government would look like in a moment when you've got a national movement saying that parties are corrupt and they're bad.”
The idea stuck, and Utah has been electing nonpartisan mayors and city councils ever since. The Beehive State isn’t the only place that subscribes to the notion that local officials should be nonpartisan. Some of the country's biggest cities like Chicago and Los Angeles also have nonpartisan races for mayor and city council.
“We feel like there are some good policy reasons for that,” said Justin Lee, deputy director of the Utah League of Cities and Towns. “Just dealing with things that are municipal level [is] different than dealing with things at the national or state level.”
Simply put, when you’re in the business of fixing potholes and making sure there’s running water, the idea is that it shouldn’t really matter what your political ideology is.
“Definitely at the local level, like 90% of what's happening is not something that the national parties are pinging off of,” said Murray. “Basically what political parties are is a brand name.”
That said, a brand name could be important to some. Lee said the League occasionally gets calls from voters who say it would be easier to “just look at the R, the D and make that selection.”
“But we do think one of the benefits, particularly with a local race, is that your municipal elected officials are the elected officials closest to you as a voter,” he said. “So there really is some benefit in being able to research these people.”
That said, voter turnout is typically lower in nonpartisan races than in partisan ones. In the 2022 midterms with a U.S. Senate seat up for grabs, 64.2% of voters cast a ballot. In the highly visible 2020 presidential race, that number was just over 90%. In 2019 the turnout for the municipal elections across Salt Lake County, the state’s most populous, didn’t even come close — just 33.85%.
Ballots are still being counted in the 2023 municipal races, in an election that was moved to mid-November to accommodate the special election for the 2nd Congressional District.
That depressed turnout in municipal off-year elections could be because it simply takes more effort for voters to learn about the candidates when there is no party identifier. There’s no shortcut to knowing what they stand for. Murray said that scenario likely played out in Ogden’s close race for mayor.
“A lot of what people were saying was there's not a lot of difference between them, and there's no party cue,” she said. “So you had to do a lot of work to figure out what Taylor Knuth stands for and what Ben Nadolski stands for. The thing that a party label does is [it] gives a person a cue, it makes it an easier proposition for a voter to vote. ‘I don't know anything else, but I know they're not on my team.’”
There’s also an argument that when elections require voters to really get to know the candidates, even though turnout might go down, it could lead to a more informed electorate.
“When you ask voters and you ask them why they didn't vote, a lot of times a big percentage of them say ‘I didn't know enough,’” said Murray. “So that is a responsible self-select out.”
“Certainly, we could have a more informed electorate in those years, and the people who don't want to put in that effort just don't vote,” said Lee.
But low turnout isn’t always a bad thing. According to Murray, high-turnout elections can indicate that many voters are unhappy.
Another potential downside is the nonpartisan system could actually favor one type of candidate over another. Research has shown that nonpartisan elections can tilt toward incumbents and candidates who already have political connections.
“Whether that's being tied into the fundraising network or just because they know people in the political sphere, there could be an advantage there,” said Lee. “I don't know if that's necessarily a failing or a benefit of the system one way or the other. It's just people who are involved in politics tend to know the other people involved in politics.”
If Utah were to ever make municipal elections partisan, that change would have to be made by the Legislature.
“There has been discussion every few years about that,” said Lee. “We haven't seen a lot of bills or something drafted on it, but the Legislature could make that change if they want to.”
