All these officials were elected by voters in the 2022 midterms, a busy cycle that saw a coordinated (and largely unsuccessful) effort by followers of Donald Trump to take over election administration. Two years later, a new round of states are selecting their chief election officials.

Twelve states are deciding in November who will run their elections going forward. 

That role is directly on the ballot in seven states; in five others, voters will elect a governor or lawmakers who’ll then get to appoint their elections chief. 

In most of these states, this elections chief is the secretary of state; but in a few, there is another office that has that authority—for instance, in Utah, it’s the lieutenant governor.

Today Bolts is publishing a new guide that walks you through these elections in all 12 states.

In some of these states, including Missouri, Oregon, and Vermont, a candidate is once again running who has clearly embraced false conspiracy theories that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump. They’ve proposed taking drastic actions such as ending mail-in voting.

In other states, such as New Hampshire or Utah, the office is unlikely to fall into the hands of an election denier. But even these races can be critical to the shape of democracy. Secretaries of state or the equivalent official often design voter outreach programs, or set policies that can make voter registration easy or difficult. They can also champion new election legislation or maneuver to stall ballot initiatives. 

The exact roles that states attribute to their chief elections officials differ from state to state—for instance, some have a hand in election certification and others do not. To clarify this landscape, Bolts has published two databases. The first details, state by state, which offices prepare and administer an election (Who Runs our Elections?). The second details, state by state, which offices handle the counting, canvassing, and certification stages (Who Counts Our Elections?). 

Explore our state breakdown of the 2024 elections below.

Delaware (via the governor’s race)

In Delaware, voters do not elect a secretary of state; instead, the governor appoints a state election commissioner. And voters this fall are choosing a new governor between New Castle County Executive Matt Meyer, a Democrat who is the heavy frontrunner in this blue state, and House Minority Leader Michael Ramone, a Republican. 

The two candidates have taken very different stances toward election reforms. As a legislator, Ramone fought Democratic efforts to expand the availability of mail voting, while Meyer supported those changes. Meyer also says he would promote voting among some groups who are traditionally marginalized, vowing in response to an ACLU questionnaire to seek automatic registration of people exiting incarceration, and by expanding ballot access in local jails.

Maine (via legislative races)

Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, a Democrat, became a national figure in late 2023 when she took Trump’s name off of the state’s ballot, citing his support for an insurrection. (The U.S. Supreme Court later put Trump back on the ballot.) Whether the office changes hands next year depends on Maine’s legislative races: Lawmakers select a secretary of state every two years. 

If Democrats retain the legislature, they could keep Bellows in office; Bellows told Bolts that she will seek another term. But the GOP has an outside shot at flipping the legislature in November. The last time they did that, in 2010, they replaced the Democratic secretary of state with a Republican. Democrats took back control of the legislature, and the secretary of state’s office, in 2012.

Missouri (via the race for secretary of state)

The secretary of state’s office in Missouri could fall into the hands of an ultraconservative Republican who has unambiguously embraced Trump’s lies about fraud and who vows that this would guide his tenure. “We have to ensure that none of the electoral fraud that took place in 2020 and stole the election from President Trump happens here,” Denny Hoskins, a state senator, told local media after winning a crowded GOP primary last month.

Hoskins, who is the front-runner in November in this staunch red state, has designs for major changes to election administration. He wants to hand count ballots and effectively eliminate absentee voting in an effort, his website says, to “root out election fraud and protect our elections from Chinese/Russian interference.”

He now faces Barbara Phifer, a Democratic state representative who broadly opposes his plans. She is also emphasizing her support for direct democracy, warning against GOP proposals to make it harder to pass citizen-initiated ballot initiatives. Hoskins championed such an effort this year, saying he was worried about the progressive push for an abortion rights measure.

Montana (via the race for secretary of state)

Secretary of State Christi Jacobsen, a Republican who is running for reelection, wants to make it harder for Montanans to vote. In 2021, her first year on the job, she strongly backed efforts by GOP lawmakers to toughen voter ID laws, end same-day registration, and make it more difficult to obtain an absentee ballot. Those policies were struck down earlier this year by the state’s liberal-leaning supreme court, and Jacobsen is now trying to get the conservative U.S. Supreme Court to revive them on appeal. 

Jacobsen has also used her authority to stall ballot initiatives, recently blocking some signatures on petitions for measures to strengthen abortion rights and bring about election reforms. 

Her Democratic opponent this November, Jesse James Mullen, says he is “appalled” by Jacobsen’s “efforts to disenfranchise Montanans.” Mullen, who owns a chain of local newspapers in Montana, opposes the GOP’s 2021 voting laws Jacobsen backed and criticizes Republicans for using false threats of voter fraud in Montana to justify new restrictions. Mullen will be an underdog in this red-leaning state that Trump is expected to decisively carry.

New Hampshire (via legislative races)

The secretary of state in New Hampshire is selected by lawmakers every two years, right after the state holds legislative elections. In the most recent such vote, in late 2022, Republican David Scanlan prevailed over a Democratic alternative. He benefited from the fact that the GOP narrowly controlled the state legislature but also got dozens of crossover votes from Democrats. That puts into question whether Democrats would oust Scanlan even if they take control of the legislature in November: In 2018, the most recent cycle in which Democrats won control of the legislature, just enough Democrats joined Republicans to reelect a secretary of state who had been supporting Republican restrictions on voter access.

Since becoming secretary of state in 2022, Scanlan has backed his party’s newest restrictions, including the proposal to require proof of citizenship when people want to register to vote.

North Carolina (via the governor’s race and/or legislative races)

While North Carolina is electing a secretary of state this year, this office has nothing to do with election administration. (For aficionados of secretary of state races, let the record reflect that longtime Democratic incumbent Elaine Marshall is seeking an eighth term against Republican Chad Brown, a county commissioner.) 

Instead, it’s the gubernatorial and legislative races that’ll determine who controls the appointed offices that oversee elections: the state board of elections, and the director of elections. 

But even then, it’s not clear who will have what power come 2025. Last year, in an ongoing effort to shrink the powers of their Democratic governor, North Carolina’s Republican lawmakers used their veto-proof majority to pass a new law stripping the governor of his influence over appointments and shifting more authority to the legislature. This was widely seen as a way to strip Democrats of their majority on the board and change the current director of elections, Karen Brinson Bell, who has questioned why the GOP is passing so many changes to election laws and has frustrated some conservatives who would like to see the state pursue fraud investigations more aggressively. 

The new law is currently caught up in court, however. The stakes of the battle over appointment powers are high: Democrats and Republicans have been clashing on a wide range of voting issues in the state, including same-day voter registration and voter ID laws.

Oregon (via the race for secretary of state)

Oregon has frequently led the way in expanding ballot access, including by pioneering universal mail voting and automatic voter registration. Democrat Tobias Read, currently state treasurer, says he is running for secretary of state this year to uphold that tradition. “Any effort to make it easier for people to vote, to remove barriers, is a good thing,” he told Bolts earlier this year, ahead of his primary victory.

Read’s Republican opponent, state Senator Dennis Linthicum, could hardly be more different, as Bolts reported in May. He is proposing to ban mail voting, despite the fact that most of the state votes by mail. He joined far-right lawmakers nationwide in 2020 to call for an audit of the 2020 presidential election based on unsubstantiated claims of fraud. And he has not committed to certifying election results, the role of a secretary of state.

Read is favored to win this race; Oregonians haven’t elected any Republican to statewide office since 2016. That would leave Linthicum without an office. He was barred from seeking another term in the state Senate because he participated in a prolonged GOP statehouse walkout in 2023.

Tennessee (via legislative races)

The secretary of state in Tennessee is not directly elected. Instead, the legislature chooses a secretary of state, who then names a state coordinator of elections—and that’s the person who state law designates as Tennessee’s chief elections official.

Republicans are massively favored to retain both chambers of the state legislature, making it very unlikely that election administration will take a different route. Secretary of State Tre Hargett has been in office since 2009, and he easily secured a new four-year term in 2021.

Mark Goins, the elections coordinator appointed by Hargett back in 2009, acted last year to drastically shut down people’s ability to regain their right to vote after a felony conviction, imposing new financial fees to even apply, and making success an extremely tall order. Hargett and Goins have backed restrictions on voter registration and mail voting, and have opposed Democratic proposals to boost turnout.

Vermont (via the race for secretary of state)

In a rematch of the 2022 race, Secretary of State Sarah Copeland Hanzas, a Democrat, faces H. Brooke Paige, a perennial Republican candidate who has fully embraced Trump’s lies about the 2020 election. The Big Lie does not sell in blue Vermont: Copeland Hanzas won the 2022 election 61 percent to 33 percent. There’s no indication that 2024 will be any different. 

“It is highly worrisome to hear people echoing false claims and misinformation about the safety and security of our elections,” Copeland Hanzas told Bolts two years ago. “It is a fundamental threat to our democracy, in that the purpose of these claims is to discourage people from participating in elections.” 

Copeland Hanzas has supported efforts by some Vermont municipalities to expand the franchise locally. Bolts has reported, for instance, on the organizing that led several cities to allow noncitizen residents to participate in local elections on Town Hall days. “We heard from these communities about why they thought it was important to be able to welcome people into the democratic franchise at the local level,” Copeland Hanzas told Bolts on why she helped authorize those reforms while in the legislature.

Utah (via the race for lieutenant governor)

Utahns abolished their secretary of state’s office in 1976, transferring the authority to oversee elections to the lieutenant governor instead.

Lieutenant Governor Deidre Henderson, a Republican, is running for reelection this year. She barely survived the GOP primary against a conservative activist who had helped organized a ballot measure to restrict mail voting and voter access. During her first term, Henderson refused to leave a bipartisan election organization that’s come under conservative fire, saying she wouldn’t bow to “radical election deniers.”

In Utah’s general elections, lieutenant governors appear on a ticket with their running-mate as part of the governor’s race, so Henderson’s fate is tied to the race between Governor Spencer Cox and Democrats’ gubernatorial nominee Brian King, who is running on a ticket with Rebekah Cummings, a librarian at the University of Utah. In this staunchly red state, it’ll be an uphill climb for Democrats to land a statewide win.

Washington (via the race for secretary of state)

In 2022, a Democrat won the secretary of state’s office for the first time in a half-century. But that was in a special election, and Steve Hobbs now has to run for a full term against Republican Dale Whitaker, the former executive director of a conservative organization. 

Whitaker, who associated himself with “America First grassroots patriots” at his state party’s convention, has taken issue with some of the state’s election rules. He has made public comments against the availability of mail voting, despite running in a state where voters trust and widely use mail ballots. “I will fight for same-day in-person voting with paper ballots,” he said in April. Hobbs supports the mail voting system. Whitaker has also taken issue with Hobbs’ decision, as part of the settlement of a lawsuit filed last year, to agree to a consent decree that removes a requirement that Washington residents wait 30 days to register to vote when they move to a new address. Whitaker, who said a “reasonable registration deadline” is important, did not reply to a request for comment on whether he supports the state’s same-day voter registration rules.

Hobbs received 48 percent in the August all-party primary, which is generally predictive of the November results, with another Democrat taking 10 percent. Whitaker received 37 percent, leaving him an underdog in November. 

West Virginia (via the race for secretary of state)

West Virginia’s outgoing secretary of state, Republican Mac Warner, says the CIA robbed Trump of victory in 2020 and attended a “Stop the Steal” rally late that year. He unsuccessfully ran for governor this year. The favorite to replace him as secretary of state? His brother Kris Warner, who also refuses to call the 2020 results legitimate.

Kris Warner is currently the director of the state’s Economic Development Authority. As he runs to become West Virginia’s next top elections official, he’s promising to purge voter rolls and figures to fit neatly within a state Republican Party that has deeply embraced election denial.

His Democratic opponent, local attorney Thornton Cooper, has said he was motivated to run because he views the Warner brothers as particular threats to democracy. But it’s become very difficult for Democrats to win in West Virginia, and Cooper doesn’t seem to be trying much. He has no functioning campaign website as of publication and, according to the state’s data, he has spent under $2,000 on this race.

What about the remaining states?

Of the 38 states that aren’t on this list, the vast majority will hold elections for secretary of state, or an equivalent office, in 2026. (Check out Bolts’ national primer from 2022 for more on how many of these states’ elections unfolded last time around.) But before that, the next milestone looms in 2025: New Jersey and Virginia will host wide open governor’s races, and the two winners will get to select their state’s secretaries of state.

The post Your Guide to All 12 States Choosing Their Next Elections Chief in November appeared first on Bolts.

Utah lawmakers responded by rewriting if not gutting the three propositions. 

On redistricting, the GOP-led legislature repealed the measure’s centerpiece, a requirement that new maps be drawn by an independent commission. Freed from that constraint, lawmakers then proceeded in late 2021 to design a congressional map that eliminated the state’s only competitive district, “cracking” Salt Lake City into four to establish four reliably Republican seats. 

The Utah Supreme Court pushed back on Thursday, issuing a landmark and unanimous ruling that affirmed a vital right to direct democracy and restricted lawmakers’ ability to ignore that power. 

“We hold that when Utahns exercise their right to reform the government through a citizen initiative, their exercise of these rights is protected from government infringement,” Justice Paige Petersen wrote in her opinion.

The ruling comes with many limitations and caveats. It does not by itself strike down the GOP’s gerrymandered maps, which remain in use for now. It does not shield initiatives from all rollback. It doesn’t even apply to all ballot measures, just those that “reform the government.” Still, it gave Utahns a new tool to challenge legislators who disregard their initiatives. 

Until now, the legislature could do virtually whatever it wanted in response to citizen measures. Lawmakers will now face a tougher test when they try to modify measures that deal with government rules and structures, and organizers may feel greater confidence that the statutes they jumpstart have at least some protection.

“This is a historic ruling,” said Ben Phillips, a lawyer with Campaign Legal Center who took part in the case on behalf of plaintiffs. “The legislature cannot, in any way it wants, just repeal any initiative that the people pass.” This is the first time the court addressed whether Utahns have a basic right to change their government, Phillips explained, and it held that giving lawmakers carte blanche to override ballot measures “would render that fundamental right meaningless.”

The ruling comes as some GOP-led states like Arkansas and Idaho have pursued aggressive efforts to narrow the scope of direct democracy. New laws have made it harder to get initiatives on the ballot. Statewide officials have resisted routine steps to stall the process. And lawmakers have tried to raise the threshold for passage, while circumventing some successful measures.

In response, some proponents of the initiative process have turned to state constitutions to protect direct democracy. Many constitutions contain provisions that pertain to access to ballot initiatives, but many state courts have taken a narrow view of them. Mississippi justices even struck down the initiative process altogether in 2021. Idaho’s supreme court took a different path the same year, striking down a new Republican law that had restricted ballot measures in a decision that affirmed “the people’s fundamental right to legislate directly.”

As a result, organizations like Reclaim Idaho, whose success in pushing progressive measures like Medicaid expansion has angered GOP lawmakers in the state, have been able to place new measures on the ballot. Idahoans in November will decide on an initiative, again supported by Reclaim Idaho, that would move the state to a ranked-choice voting system. 

In Utah, voting rights groups reacted with anger to lawmakers’ ignoring Proposition 4, the 2018 initiative on redistricting. “When the Legislature did indeed do what they wanted anyway, they confirmed the beliefs of the discouraged, the cynical, all the people who believe their votes and their opinions don’t matter,” Catherine Weller, then president of the League of Women Voters of Utah, said in early 2022.

Several groups, including the League of Women Voters, filed a lawsuit that year against the new map. They argued that the new districts were an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander; other state supreme courts have recognized partisan-gerrymandering claims, even as the U.S. Supreme Court has refused to. But these groups also raised another claim: that it was unconstitutional for lawmakers to just gut the 2018 redistricting initiative.

They rooted their claim in Article I, Section 2, of the Utah Constitution, which states that “the people” have “the right to alter or reform their government as the public welfare may require.” The lawsuit argued that, in passing a statute to set up a new redistricting process, voters exercised their power to “alter or reform their government,” and that the legislature violated that right when it repealed the powers of the independent redistricting commission.

The state supreme court agreed with the plaintiffs’ argument that Utahns have a right to “alter or reform their government.” Peterson wrote that “government-reform initiatives are constitutionally protected from unfettered legislative amendment, repeal, or replacement.”

While the ruling was immediately celebrated by voting rights groups, it also left much unresolved.

For one, the decision doesn’t protect all initiatives, only those that concern “government reform.” What exactly falls under that purview will likely be the subject of future litigation. Even then, the court said that lawmakers retain the power to change citizen initiatives; but changes cannot “impair the reforms” unless that impairment is “narrowly tailored to advance a compelling government interest.” 

This test, known as “strict scrutiny,” is generally difficult to meet. Still, whether changes are “narrowly tailored,” and whether lawmakers’ interest is “compelling,” is left to courts to decide.

The court did not even say whether Senate Bill 200—the specific legislation at issue in this case, with which lawmakers gutted Prop 4 and ended independent redistricting reform—crossed that line. It affirmed the people’s protected right to reform their government, but it did not provide any answer as to whether the GOP’s decision to gut the redistricting initiative violated that right.

Instead, they sent the case back to the trial court to hear arguments on that point, a process that will take a lot of additional time. (They also did not address whether the Utah Constitution bans partisan gerrymandering.)

The court has already drawn scrutiny for how long this case has dragged on: It heard arguments in July 2023 and waited roughly a year to issue a ruling. 

The delay, and their decision to send the case back to a district court, guarantees that the state will again elect its members of Congress this year under the same maps as in 2022, despite the allegation that they were unconstitutionally drawn. 

Still, if the lower court finds that Utah lawmakers lacked a “compelling government interest” in gutting the 2018 redistricting reform, it may end up reinstating that proposition, and the state’s maps would have to be redrawn in advance of the 2026 elections. 

There’d need to be plenty of additional litigation before any new districts are ordered. But on Thursday at least, advocates were hopeful that the court’s ruling would bring back redistricting reform and lead to fairer maps. 

Phillips, the Campaign Legal Center attorney, thinks the plaintiffs will win again in district court. He believes that a judge will find that GOP lawmakers’ law gutting Prop 4 fails strict scrutiny and reinstate the independent commission. “No matter what compelling interest [lawmakers] assert, it’s hard to imagine that completely gutting Prop 4 would be narrowly tailored,” he said. “The ruling is an important step in ensuring that Prop 4 is back in effect, with all of its provisions for independent redistricting.”

He added, “The bottom line is that we overcame an important hurdle on the way to fair maps.”

The post Utah’s Highest Court Safeguards the People’s Right to Direct Democracy appeared first on Bolts.

The use of the death penalty in Utah County, a majority Republican county that’s the second most populous in Utah, had been rare when Leavitt took office in 2019, two years after the Baum murders. The last time a Utah County attorney had sought the death penalty was in 1984, when prosecutors pushed for the exections of Ron and Dan Lafferty, who had been charged with capital murder for the killings of their sister-in-law Brenda Lafferty and her 15-month old daughter, Erica. (Dan was sentenced to life in prison, where he remains, while Ron died of natural causes on death row.)

As the Baum prosecution got underway, Leavitt, a Republican, assigned four full-time prosecutors to the case. But then he quickly saw how they detracted from other prosecutions. At the start of the Baum case, Leavitt said his office was handling 17 homicide prosecutions and around 230 cases involving sex crimes. Typically, Leavitt said, each prosecutor in his office would work more than 100 cases. 

Leavitt eventually decided that seeking death was no longer worth it, announcing last September, that he would take the death penalty off the table in Baum’s case and never again seek the ultimate punishment, saying it deterred him from his ultimate goal of public safety. 

“My commitment to you when I took office was to focus our efforts on community protection rather than on methods of the past that have long since proven ineffective,” Leavitt said in a statement at the time. “Focusing on ALL victims by no longer seeking the death penalty advances that commitment.” In April, a jury convicted Baum of aggravated murder. Leavitt’s office argued for four consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole, and a jury agreed during Baum’s sentencing last week. By not seeking the death penalty, Leavitt says his office only had to assign two lawyers to the case instead of four, and estimated the trial was shortened by about three months. 

“The doctrine of limited government is that government acts only to the extent necessary to get the job done,” Leavitt told Bolts in an interview. “But what is the job? The job in this case is protecting society. And we can protect society far better with life in prison without parole than we can with the death penalty.” 

In recent years, conservative politicians across the country have joined in Leavitt’s thinking, shifting from once zealous proponents of capital punishment to supporters of limiting and ending the practice. Leavitt, however, may be the only known conservative prosecutor to have done so. He has been lauded as a trailblazer among the nation’s conservative groups fighting to end the death penalty, who typically frame their stance as pro-life, fiscally responsible, and in line with limited government. 

But at home, his move sparked a heated political battle: the county’s commissioners have voted in favor of abolishing the death penalty, while the Fraternal Order of the Police and a group of former prosecutors issued a vote of no confidence in Leavitt. 

Leavitt’s pivot away from the death penalty might now cost him his job in Utah County. He faces tough competition to keep his seat in Utah’s June 28 Republican primary, up against an opponent who cites his stance on the death penalty and the Baum case in pushing the narrative that Leavitt is soft on crime.

“I think it’s a violation of his oath not to pursue the death penalty in appropriate cases,” Jeff Gray, who is an assistant Utah solicitor general, told the Daily Herald in January. Adam Pomeroy, who currently works under Leavitt as a deputy county attorney and who dropped out of the primary in early June to endorse Gray, told Bolts that Leavitt has “become a rogue prosecutor who simply refuses to follow what the law is.” Pomeroy also called it “completely inappropriate for a county attorney to unilaterally decide, disregard the will of the people and nullify a law he personally disagrees with that usurps the legislative function.”

Before becoming Utah County attorney, Leavitt served as top prosecutor for Juab County from 1995 to 2003. After he lost the 2002 election, he started working in Ukraine and Moldova to reform their criminal justice systems. “In 2018,” Leavitt said, he “realized that I really had very little business traveling 7,000 miles to try and reform someone else’s criminal justice system when my own was falling apart around me.”

After taking office, he first introduced a pre-filing diversion program that would allow people accused of low-level crimes to avoid conviction and prison time by participating in classes, community service, and treatment programs. He also aimed to reduce incarceration for non-violent offenses, and change the office’s charging practices. 

Leavitt was presented with the Baum case his first year in office. Initially, he remembered thinking, “If there was ever a crime that in my estimation warranted the death penalty it is that one.” But the resources and time devoted to the case at the expense of others made him rethink his position. Leavitt said that he also considered that even if the jury sentenced Baum to death, it would be decades before he would be executed, if ever. (The last person Utah executed, Ronnie Lee Gardner, spent nearly 25 years on death row between his conviction and execution, and Utah has not carried out an execution in 12 years.) Leavitt said he also had problems with coercive plea bargaining in capital murder cases and the possibility that an innocent person could be executed at the government’s hands. 

“My evolution with the death penalty really came down to the fact that I realized that the only person that really benefits from seeking the death penalty is me as the elected prosecutor because it makes me look tough on crime,” Leavitt told Bolts. “But at the same time, the prosecutor is spending all the government resources, we’re diminishing the effectiveness of all the other cases in the office.”

He added, “In my mind, the choice was clear. I’m not here to get and stay elected. I’m here to reform the criminal justice system.”

The families of Baum’s victims have criticized Leavitt’s decision to drop the death penalty. “There is no reform for this man. There is no rebuilding,” Amanda Davis, Otteson’s aunt, said of Baum during an interview with local news outlet KSL. “Taking the death penalty off the table makes it, like, he won. He got what he wanted.” 

Leavitt isn’t the only prosecutor in Utah to move away from the death penalty. Shortly after his announcement in September, he was joined by three others, two Democrats and one independent, in an open letter urging the state legislature and Governor Spencer Cox to repeal the state’s death penalty statute. Instead, they favored the introduction of a 45 years-to-life sentence to replace the death penalty, along with the existing punishments for aggravated murder of life without parole and 25 years-to-life. 

Leavitt is part of a growing movement of Republican politicans who are increasingly fueling efforts to end the death penalty. In January, two Republican Utah lawmakers who had formerly supported capital punishment introduced legislation that would prohibit prosecutors from seeking death; the bill failed in committee by a 6–5 vote. In Kentucky, a conservative lawmaker introduced a bill that was signed into law in April that would prevent people with certain mental illnesses from being sentenced to death. Missouri’s legislature is now considering a Republican-sponsored bill that would abolish the death penalty on the grounds that the government cannot be trusted with administering the ultimate punishment. And a bill to end the death penalty in Ohio, which has a Republican governor and legislature, is gaining traction, having gone further than others before it. 

Utah’s conservative activists have not responded positively, though. Pomeroy led with 46 percent of the vote in April’s county GOP convention, a gathering which grassroots activists usually dominate, while Gray had nearly 44 percent. Leavitt won just 10 percent but will appear on the June ballot because of the signatures he collected. 

Regardless of the outcome, Leavitt has already helped change the debate on capital punishment among conservatives, says Demetrius Minor, national manager for Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty. “I believe that because of David Leavitt, that could possibly open up the gateway for for other prosecutors to come forward in opposition to the death penalty,” Minor told Bolts. “There’s definitely a shift happening. It’s not a matter of if it’s a matter of when.”

The story has been updated to note that one of the primary candidates dropped out in early June.

The post Utah Prosecutor Tests GOP Appetite for Opposing the Death Penalty appeared first on Bolts.

The filing period for candidates to run for prosecutor closed in five states over the past month, adding clarity to the question of where the midterms may shake up the criminal legal system’s status quo. With primaries looming as early as May, criminal justice reformers are pressing their case from North Carolina’s biggest cities to Omaha and the Portland suburbs.

Public defenders and legal aid advocates are running in Arkansas, Nebraska, and Oregon, enlivening proceedings in places like Little Rock and Salem that have not seen a contested election in decades. In North Carolina, where racial justice protests drew thousands into the streets in 2020, challengers are now running on reform promises. And Utah brings the uncommon sight of a Republican reform incumbent who faces a tough-on-crime challenger. 

But away from those fireworks, the filing deadline is more often than not the end of the road for a prosecutor election, as most races only drew one candidate. In Oregon, whose filing deadline passed on Tuesday, just two of 15 DA elections feature multiple contenders. 

The situation is only slightly less desolate in Arkansas and North Carolina, where filing deadlines passed last week. Roughly one-third of their elections will be competitive this year. In each of Nebraska and Utah, the two most populous counties at least will have contested elections. (In Texas, as Bolts reviewed last month, 76 percent of elections are uncontested this year.)

Still, those elections that will be contested offer rare opportunities to confront local injustices. Arkansas, for instance, has a unique law that criminalizes falling behind on rent, empowering local prosecutors who choose to use it. And North Carolina allows children to be prosecuted at an unusually young age, though the state reformed its statutes last year. 

Below is Bolts’s preliminary guide to the prosecutor elections in those five states.

Arkansas

Larry Jegley has been the prosecutor in the state’s most populous judicial district (Perry and Pulaski counties, home to Little Rock) since 1997, and yet he has never faced an opponent—not once, over eight elections. This year Jegley is retiring, and voters will get a choice for the first time in decades. And it may be a historic election: Alicia Walton is running to become the first Black prosecutor in the history of a district whose population is 37 percent Black.

Walton, a public defender, vows to reform what her website calls a “fundamentally flawed” criminal legal system. Her opponent Will Jones is the chief deputy prosecutor in a neighboring district who worked under Jegley for more than a decade. 

Another public defender, Sonia Fonticiella, is running for prosecutor in the eastern part of the state, in a district that covers Clay, Craighead, Crittenden, Greene, Mississippi and Poinsett counties. She will face deputy prosecutors Martin Lilly and Corey Seats. And in Northwest Arkansas (Madison and Washington counties), incumbent Matt Durrett faces Stephen Coger, who says incarceration is too high in the district and that he would change bail and jail practices, though Coger also attacks Durrett for being too lenient toward people accused of higher-level crimes.

The state has five other contested races, all in smaller jurisdictions (twenty districts drew only one candidate). The full list of candidates is available here.

These are nonpartisan elections scheduled for May 24.

Nebraska

Each of Nebraska’s 93 counties will elect its prosecutor this year, but stakes are highest in the only two counties with at least 100,000 residents with a contested election.

Both races pit a Republican incumbent against a Democratic challenger who proposes some reforms in counties that went for Joe Biden in 2020. In Lancaster County (Lincoln), County Attorney Pat Condon faces Adam Morfeld, a former lawmaker who founded the progressive organization Civic Nebraska and helped lead efforts to expand Medicaid in the state.

But the state’s premier battle is in Omaha: Douglas County Attorney Don Kleine switched to the GOP two years ago after the Democratic Party accused him of furthering white supremacy; he had brought no charges against the man who killed James Scurlock, a Black protester. In November, Kleine will face Democratic challenger Dave Pantos, the former director of Legal Aid of Nebraska, whose platform is largely centered on reform themes.

North Carolina

Mecklenburg (Charlotte) and Wake (Raleigh) counties, each jurisdictions of more than one million people, mirror one another this year. 

In each, a Democratic DA is seeking re-election but must face a defense attorney in the May primary. In Charlotte, challenger Tim Emry has been part of the local coalition Decarcerate Mecklenburg, which has sought to reduce jail population during the COVID-19 pandemic; he faces DA Spencer Merriweather. In Raleigh, Demon Cheston, whose criminal defense practice involves capital punishment cases, is challenging DA Lorrin Freeman. Cheston and Emry are each running on progressive platforms that include never seeking the death penalty and accountability for police officers who lie or commit misconduct. During the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, Charlotte and Raleigh drew thousands of protesters who demanded action against racial injustice and more accountability for the police. 

Other populous North Carolina districts are hosting competitive DA elections as well.

In Forsyth County (Winston-Salem), the race will come down to the November general election. In this county that voted for Biden by 14 percentage points, Republican DA Jim O’Neill will face Democrat Denise Hartsfield, a retired judge who is also a former prosecutor and attorney with the Legal Aid Society.

There are also Democratic primaries to watch in Buncombe (Asheville), Durham, and Guilford (Greensboro) counties, though some of the candidates who filed do not appear to be running active campaigns as of publication. In Buncombe, the incumbent faces tough-on-crime attacks from at least one challenger.  In Durham, two defense attorneys filed to run against DA Satana Deberry, who has built a reformer profile, rolling out bail reform and clearing thousands of old fines and fees. Deberry testified in Congress earlier this week on behalf of progressive prosecutors. “Stop pretending reform is the real threat to public safety,” she said.

The North Carolina primaries are on May 17th. The full list of candidates is available here.

Oregon

Even by low national standards, Oregon has a striking problem with democracy when it comes to its DAs. It has long been marred by a pattern of DAs resigning shortly before their terms conclude—with governors filling the resulting vacancies by appointing deputy prosecutors who then get to face voters as incumbents. That dynamic struck again in 2022, though only in one county. What’s more shocking is that only two elections out of 15 drew multiple candidates.

At least both of those races offer voters a real choice on the direction of local criminal justice policy.

Populous Washington County, right next to Portland, features a clear-cut divide between DA Kevin Barton and challenger Brian Decker, a public defender who is active in various reform drives and advocates for investing in programs that fall outside the criminal legal system. Barton is attacking Decker’s views as “dangerous” and holding up neighboring Portland, which is led by a reform-minded DA, as a boogeyman. (Barton’s 2018 election featured a similar contrast, and he won with some ease after an uncommonly expensive campaign.) Further south, in Marion County (Salem), public defender Spencer Todd is challenging DA Paige Clarkson, saying he wants to turn the page of “tough on crime” policies. Marion County has not had a contested DA race since at least the 1990s.

Oregon’s DAs are notoriously active in opposing criminal justice reform legislation, making these elections meaningful for statewide policy as well. However a coalition of three reform DAs formed in the wake of the 2020 elections, with the new DA of Multnomah County (Portland) banding together with those of smaller Deschutes and Wasco counties to defend reform bills. But the group is set to lose one of its three members as Deschutes County DA Jon Hummel is retiring. He will be replaced by Steve Gunnels, a longtime prosecutor who is the only candidate who filed. (The Multnomah and Wasco DAs are not on the ballot this year.) 

Oregon’s DA elections are nonpartisan elections that are scheduled for May 17. The full list of candidates is available here.

Utah

David Leavitt is the rare Republican prosecutor who grabs headlines for championing criminal justice reform. As county attorney of Utah County, he established new diversion programs after he came into office, and last fall he announced he would no longer seek the death penalty. “It simply demonstrates our societal preference for retribution over public safety,” he said of capital punishment in a public release. 

Leavitt’s re-election race will test the GOP’s appetite for such changes. He faces Jeffrey Gray, an assistant Utah solicitor general who touts his ties to law enforcementand promises to bring back the death penalty if elected. 

Over in Salt Lake County, Democratic prosecutor Sim Gill triggered a national furor during the Black Lives Matters protests of 2020, filing gang enhancements against protesters accused of spilling red paint in front of his office, which threatened sentences of up to life in prison (the charges were later amended). Protestors were criticizing Gill’s decision to decline charges against officers who killed 22-year-old Bernardo Palacios-Carbajal earlier that year. But Gill is in relatively good shape in his reelection bid this year; he drew no challenger in the Democratic primary, which can be decisive in this blue-leaning jurisdiction. Republican challenger Danielle Ahn has no campaign website or campaign account as of publication.

Utah only has two other contested prosecutor races: one in Washington County where a GOP incumbent faces a Libertarian challenger, and one in the very sparsely populated Grand County.

The primaries will be held on June 28, followed by the November general elections. The full list of candidates is available here.

The post Public Defenders Shake Up Key Prosecutor Races from Arkansas to Oregon appeared first on Bolts.

Update: The governor signed the repeal legislation into law on March 31.

Utah is on the verge of either rolling back or reaffirming a bail reform law that passed in 2020 with an unusual amalgam of supporters. Lawmakers from both parties—alongside prosecutors, public defenders, and advocates—backed the reforms, which passed the GOP-controlled legislature last spring and curtailed the use of cash bail. But almost immediately after the bill took effect in October, some Republican lawmakers and sheriffs began criticizing the changes as a threat to public safety, and the legislature passed a bill to repeal the measures this month.

Now the repeal will either be signed or vetoed by Governor Spencer Cox, a Republican, who has indicated that he’s on the fence about what to do.

The outcome will have implications for Utah residents awaiting trial, where cash bail has long been the most widely used pretrial tool. Nationwide, advocates have faulted the cash bail system for the disproportionate pretrial incarceration of poor people, especially people of color, who often face further consequences like job loss as a result. 

State Representative Stephanie Pitcher, a Democrat, says she has pushed to reduce the use of cash bail in Utah out of frustration that people charged with crimes either remain in jail or go free based solely on whether they have means to pay. “This came from my own experiences in court and realizing it’s such a nonsensical system that we decide pretrial release based on wealth,” said Pitcher, who is a prosecutor.

At the start of 2020, Pitcher introduced the bail reform—House Bill 206—which required judges to set the “least restrictive” conditions to ensure a defendant comes to court. In effect, the bill transitioned Utah’s judiciary away from the bail schedule courts had long used, which assigned a specific dollar amount to every offense. Cash bail could still be used under HB 206, but judges would have more discretion and obligation to consider other factors. The bill gained traction in the legislature, which was and remains Republican-controlled, and ultimately passed; it took effect Oct. 1.

Utah’s bail reform did not go as far as states like Illinois and New Jersey, which in recent years have sought to virtually end the use of cash bail. Pitcher did not clarify if she supported eliminating cash bail but told The Appeal: Political Report that she does not see that happening in Utah  “anytime soon” because of the influence of the bail bond lobby. Still, local activists have said that despite its limitations, the new law is having a positive effect. Founders of the Salt Lake Community Bail Fund said they were able to free far more people after HB 206 took effect because bail sums dropped from the “astronomically large” amounts that defendants were held on before. 

HB 206 wasn’t the first time cash bail came under scrutiny in Utah. In 2015, a group of prosecutors, judges, defense attorneys, sheriffs, bail bond agents and academics prepared a report for the Utah Judicial Council on pretrial release best practices. A Republican state senator introduced a bill similar to Pitcher’s in 2016, though it didn’t make it out of committee. There have also been several legislative audits of Utah’s pretrial system over the last few years. And Shima Baradaran Baughman, a criminal law professor at the University of Utah, has been urging bail reform in her state since 2010.  She said she made the case that “conservative states should rely on bail reform to save money” to the Utah Commission on Criminal and Juvenile Justice. “Less people in jail means less money spent on jail beds. Since Utah ha[d] a problem with jail beds … this was compelling,” Baughman said.

Sim Gill, a Democrat who is the district attorney of Salt Lake County, has spoken against repealing the new bail law and pointed out that Utah has a history of embracing criminal justice reforms, particularly when they encourage fiscal savings. In 2019, Utah became the second state to pass a bill that would automatically clear criminal records of people convicted of low-level crimes, and taxpayer savings was one benefit of the law that proponents touted. 

Troy Rawlings, the chief prosecutor for Davis County,  has also vocally opposed the repeal. Rawlings, a Republican, told the Political Report he grew interested in tackling cash bail about four years ago, when he started to learn of civil lawsuits in other states brought by individuals who argued they had been unconstitutionally detained because of their inability to pay for release. These judgments prompted conversations among people in Rawlings’s office about cash bail-related issues.

Despite the growing bipartisan support for bail reform, criticisms started pouring in when HB 206 took effect—not just from those who opposed the new law, but also from advocates who say that it left too much room for prosecutors and judges to continue locking people up. Ben Aldana, a public defender in Utah County, said he noticed judges began holding more people without bail, even for low-level offenses. Although Aldana doesn’t inherently oppose holding people without bail, he says everyone should be afforded a hearing to call witnesses before any decision like that is made. “When my clients were denied the right to bail I was told to go pound sand and prosecutors would later come to them with a plea agreement if they pled guilty,” he said. “I was and still am very upset about this; it flies in the face of a fair system.” 

Leaders with the Salt Lake Community Bail Fund, which launched in September, say that although the monetary amounts of the bail requests they received decreased significantly after HB 206 took effect, the law was not applied retroactively, and it still allowed judges to include a lot of challenging stipulations for defendants, like electronic monitoring and requirements to show up at police departments at unusual times. “Yes, we saw more lower bails, but we still see high bails sometimes in excess of $5,000,” Emily Lyver, a co-founder, told the Political Report. “It’s purely discretionary.”

Meanwhile, a vocal campaign against the reforms emerged, led by the Utah Sheriffs’ Association and House Majority Whip Mike Schultz, who introduced a bill to repeal HB 206 in January. Opponents argued that the reforms had failed and resulted in too many violent offenders going free, though they had no credible data to back up their assertions. Some of the actions they complained about, like judges issuing penny warrants to keep jail populations low, were actually driven by COVID-19 concerns. “Penny warrants are 100 percent COVID-related and not at all anything to do with House Bill 206,” an assistant state court administrator testified in January.

Although no state-level data is yet available, Gill said data from his county showed the reforms were working as intended, with more low-level offenders released without cash bail and more violent offenders detained. Gill, Rawlings, and David Leavitt, the Republican chief prosecutor for Utah County, represent the state’s three most populous counties; they called efforts to repeal HB 206 “bad faith.” The executive director and president of the Utah Sheriffs’ Association did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

One Republican state senator, Todd Weiler, sponsored a bill this winter to amend HB 206 rather than repeal it. He convened a working group of stakeholders to craft agreeable language. Aldana was involved and supported the “fix-it bill,” which among other things would have ensured bail hearings. “That resolved a lot of the issues I had had, because instead of just willy-nilly denying someone the right to bail, a judge would have to really think about it and say well if I deny this person bail, the defendant will now have the right to subpoena witnesses,” Aldana said. Pitcher and the ACLU of Utah also supported the fix-it bill, but instead Schultz’s repeal bill passed and is now awaiting the governor’s signature.

Rawlings suspects that proponents of full repeal are doing the bidding of the bail bond industry, which has stayed conspicuously quiet this year. “Everyone knows it,” he told the Political Report. “They’re propping up sheriffs as surrogates, and it will be very interesting to see the campaign contributions to legislators who voted in favor of repeal.”

Governor Cox has said he is “not crazy” about approving the bail reform repeal bill, and is interested in convening a special session to address the issue. His deadline to make a decision on whether to veto is Thursday.

Supporters of HB 206 say one problem with repealing the bill is that the courts have already spent a year updating their rules and procedures, and eliminating the statute now would cause confusion. “It’s like unscrambling an egg,” said Aldana. “You can’t do it and you’ll be left with a mess.”

Rawlings said he thinks it would be tough to get consensus in a special session for a new bail reform bill, though he believes the judiciary will continue to consider risk factors and ability to pay regardless of what the governor decides. “We’re hearing from judges that they think this is the right thing to do, too,” he said.

Activists with the Salt Lake Community Bail Fund opposed the repeal effort, but say if it succeeds, then they will make every effort to be at the table for the next bill. “In some ways it would be a unique opportunity for us to be invited to the idea table,” said Lexie Wilson. “We want reforms to help build towards eliminating cash bail and not adding other carceral obligations.”

The post Utah’s Hard-Won Bail Reforms Are in Jeopardy appeared first on Bolts.

Criminal convictions have ramifications far beyond the explicit sentences imposed on individuals, impeding their access to housing and blocking them from jobs for the decades that follow. Different states open the door to varying degrees for people to have their records cleared, but even for eligible individuals, the process is so difficult—and costly—that few people take advantage of it.

Reform advocates have had recent success targeting both sides of that problem. Last year, Pennsylvania expanded who is eligible to have their records sealed, and made the process automatic for some. (The latter step is in the implementation phase.) The state may soon have company.

Earlier this month, the Utah Legislature passed a “Clean Slate” bill, similar to Pennsylvania’s, to automate some of its expungement process. And reformers in Delaware are working to increase people’s eligibility for expungement in the first place; state law currently provides adults no opportunity short of a pardon to have past convictions expunged.

“If you address mandatory minimums, and sentencing reform, and prison conditions but neglect to address barriers of re-entry, then people are going to be trapped in cycles of incarceration and reincarceration where they don’t have job opportunities on the other side,” said Rebecca Vallas, the vice president for the Poverty to Prosperity Program at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank.

Delaware’s proposed legislation (Senate Bill 37) would delineate cases in which expungement petitions must be granted (arrests where there was no conviction and some lower-level convictions). It would also delineate other situations, including some felony convictions, where expungement is at the discretion of courts. SB 37 intends to “protect persons from unwarranted damage which may occur when the existence of a criminal history continues indefinitely,” according to a draft provided to the Political Report.

State Senator Darius Brown, a sponsor of the bill, told me that removing the “barriers and impediments” that people with convictions will promote “economic opportunity and economic justice,” and provide “opportunity for upward mobility.” “I don’t think that someone’s criminal record should be a life sentence,” Brown said. A new study conducted at the University of Michigan found that Michiganders who received an expungement saw their wages go up by more than 20 percent within a year, boosted by an easier time navigating the job market.

This bill is part of a larger package of proposals announced last week by a coalition of legal, legislative, and associative actors. Proposals include lowering charges for drug offenses, limiting the treatment of minors as adults, and constraining the stacking of charges. Some would codify into law Attorney General Kathleen Jennings’s new guidelines for state prosecutors.

SB 37 would expand eligibility for expungement in Delaware, but individuals would have to take action to benefit. Brown told me that the coalition pushing the bill would need to continue its work to ensure “that people are informed and educated” and organize events to promote access.

Unlike Delaware, Utah already allows adults with misdemeanor or felony convictions to petition for expungement after a set period of time.

But people hoping for expungement must file petitions and face multiple fees and filing requirements. In Utah, as elsewhere, many people do not apply or face obstacles when they do. The University of Michigan study found that 90 percent of eligible Michiganders do not apply for reasons ranging from cost and bureaucratic complexity to insufficient information. These are issues in Utah as well. Noella Sudbury, director of the Salt Lake County’s Criminal Justice Advisory Council, asked impacted individuals why they had yet to apply during an “expungement day” her office organized last year. “The two top reasons were that it’s too overwhelming and complicated, and it’s too expensive,” she said.

Vallas, who helped develop the original Clean Slate bill in Pennsylvania, emphasized the procedural maze that individuals need to surmount to benefit from expungement in nonautomated systems. The point of an “automatic clearing of criminal records,” she said, is for people to not “have to go through that one-off process of having to figure out a bunch of complicated legal documents, going in front of a judge, filling court dockets.”

Utah’s Clean Slate legislation (House Bill 431) would create such an automatic process. It would apply to people who were acquitted and to people who were convicted of some misdemeanor offenses after waiting periods of up to seven years after sentencing. The bill “shifts the burden away from the individual to the government,” said Sudbury, who advocated for the legislation alongside its sponsor, state Representative Eric Hutchings, and a coalition of Utah groups.

“It just says we have the technological tools to identify who you are and give notice to all those agencies that your record is expunged, and if after a period of time, you would have your record expunged anyway, then we will expunge it for you,” Sudbury said.

The bill has passed both legislative chambers unanimously and is now on the governor’s desk.

Major avenues for further reform remain. Pennsylvania’s Clean Slate bill automated the process to seal rather than expunge records, which would still be accessible by some parties such as local law enforcement. Access to Utah’s expunged records would be more restricted. Utah’s legislature also adopted House Bill 212, which bars employers from asking about expunged convictions. In addition, Sudbury said Utah should revisit the connection between debt and expungement. “If you have open debt you wouldn’t be eligible,” she said. Paying off court fines and fees hinges on an ability to gain a stable income, and this is hindered as long as people retain a record.

Clean Slate bills that would automate existing expungement processes have been introduced in a number of other states, including in California, where it is championed by San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón. In January, California began implementing a law that automates the initiation of the expungement process for marijuana-related convictions.

Update: The original article has been corrected to reflect that the Utah legislature passed House Bill 212.

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