Utah lawmakers just took a big first step toward reshuffling who runs the state’s elections, moving to strip that power from the lieutenant governor and revive the long-dormant office of secretary of state. On Tuesday, the House Government Operations Committee advanced both a bill to recreate the office and a companion constitutional amendment, sending the plan from Rep. Lisa Shepherd on to the full House for a higher-profile showdown.
What The Committee Approved
The committee signed off on H.B. 529 and H.J.R. 25, a pair of measures that work in tandem to make the secretary of state Utah’s chief elections officer and then ask voters to sign off on the constitutional change. Shepherd told colleagues she wants to fix what she called “a structural problem” in state government, where the person in charge of elections answers to the governor, and backers argued the new setup would help calm public worries about conflicts of interest. Those details were outlined in committee coverage from KSL.
How It Would Work
Under the proposal, the secretary of state would become Utah’s top elections official and, at least as currently drafted, hold a partisan, statewide elected office with a two-year term. The joint resolution would place a constitutional amendment on the ballot, and lawmakers have penciled in the 2028 general election as the first time voters could actually choose a secretary of state. The requirement that a constitutional amendment clear a two-thirds vote in both the House and Senate is spelled out in the measure language, according to the Utah Legislature’s pages for H.B. 529 and H.J.R. 25.
Supporters And Opposition
Backers on the panel said carving election oversight out of the governor’s orbit would shore up trust by removing even the appearance that the governor’s own political fortunes could be entangled with how elections are run. Skeptics countered that turning the job into another partisan office might inject more politics into the nuts and bolts of ballot counting. The measures still cleared the committee with bipartisan support, but Rep. Andrew Stoddard cast the lone no vote and urged colleagues to slow down and study the structural change more carefully before locking it into the constitution. Lawmaker comments and debate were detailed by KSL.
Where The Idea Came From
The notion of pulling election duties away from the lieutenant governor is not new at the Capitol. In recent years, lawmakers have floated various models, including creating an appointed elections director or otherwise putting more distance between the governor’s ticket and the state’s top election administrator. Historical reporting has also pointed out that Utah once had an elected secretary of state, but shifted those responsibilities to the lieutenant governor in the 1970s. That background is laid out in coverage from Deseret News.
Next Steps
Before voters get a say, H.B. 529 and H.J.R. 25 still have to survive floor votes in both chambers and meet the higher two-thirds bar for constitutional changes, so the calendar now depends on how quickly House and Senate leaders decide to move them. For the moment, both items are in the early stages of the 2026 session and stand as freshly approved committee bills, leaving the rest of the Legislature, and eventually the electorate, to determine whether Utah brings back a secretary of state. Current status updates and full bill texts are available via LegiScan.
