Tag Archives: representation

Recap: The 2015 Utah Legislature

Posted on March 17, 2015 by Adam Brown

Last Thursday, the Utah Legislature concluded its seven-week annual lawmaking session. The state’s major newspapers have already published several excellent recaps of the major policy changes coming out of the session. So now I’ll give my annual recap of the session’s trends … Continue reading →

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What Utah voters want from their Legislature

Posted on October 28, 2014 by Adam Brown

The three issues voters most want the Legislature to address: Reducing corruption among elected officials, improving Utah’s air quality, and increasing spending on K-12 public education. This post is a collaboration between Mike Barber and Adam Brown. Both are assistant … Continue reading →

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Recap: The 2014 Utah Legislature

Posted on March 19, 2014 by Adam Brown

I’ve just posted several items about the recently concluded legislative session. Here’s a quick overview: The 2014 Legislature: Slow out of the gate, frantic in the stretch. Legislators considered 786 bills, but a procedural change caused a major crunch in … Continue reading →

Posted in Everything | Tagged absenteeism, consensus, legislative life, legislature, measurement, navel gazing, partisanship, rankings, representation, roll call votes | Comments Off

Who missed the most votes in the 2014 Utah Legislature?

Posted on March 19, 2014 by Adam Brown

Legislators miss a lot of votes in the Utah Legislature, and some miss more than others. As the figure below shows, there wasn’t much change in the overall absenteeism rate, with 12% of Senators and 6% of Representatives missing a … Continue reading →

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Recap: Looking back at the 2013 Utah Legislature

Posted on March 27, 2013 by Adam Brown

I’ve posted tons of stats about the Utah Legislature in the past couple days. To recap, here’s a quick summary of some of what you can now find here: Do legislators work enough to justify their salary? If you take … Continue reading →

Posted in Everything | Tagged absenteeism, consensus, legislative life, legislature, measurement, navel gazing, partisanship, rankings, representation, roll call votes | 1 Comment

Who missed the most votes in 2013?

Posted on March 27, 2013 by Adam Brown

With so much going on in such a short session, it may be inevitable that legislators may miss lots of votes Utah’s Constitution limits the Legislature to convening for only 45 days each year. Once you take out the weekends, … Continue reading →

Posted in Everything | Tagged absenteeism, leadership, legislature, representation, senate president, speaker of the house | 3 Comments

Do Utah Legislators work enough to justify their salary?

Posted on March 7, 2013 by Adam Brown

It’s not much of a stretch to claim that Utah Legislators earn poverty wages. Since passage of HJR006 early in 2013, Utah Legislators will earn $16,500 per year. It can be difficult to know how many hours legislators put in … Continue reading →

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Did gerrymandering produce Republican gains in the Utah Legislature?

Posted on November 13, 2012 by Adam Brown

Single member districts are always going to give the minority party fewer seats than votes, and the disparity gets larger as the minority party gets smaller. I wrote last week that the 2013 Utah Legislature will be the second-most Republican … Continue reading →

Posted in Everything | Tagged counties, democrat, legislature, redistricting, representation, republican, salt lake county, single member districts, utah county | 1 Comment

Redistricting is not expected to change the partisan balance of Congress

Posted on September 28, 2012 by Adam Brown

They conclude that Utah did not experience a partisan gerrymander of its US House seats. In a painstaking state-by-state analysis of all 435 U.S. House seats, some sharp political scientists predict that the 2011 redistricting round will have no net … Continue reading →

Posted in Everything | Tagged congress, legislature, partisanship, redistricting, representation, republic | 3 Comments

Cage match: Janice Fisher and Fred Cox

Posted on July 31, 2012 by Adam Brown

Representatives Cox and Fisher disagreed 54% of the time on close votes. The new legislative district maps adopted a few months back placed two Utah legislators into the same district: Republican Fred Cox and Democrat Janice Fisher. Now that both … Continue reading →

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