The Count My Vote ballot initiative has revised the time and places for some of the public hearings it has scheduled for Friday and Saturday.
That includes moving one hearing from Herriman to Cottonwood Heights.
The revised schedule now includes three hearings on Friday: at 10 a.m. in the Logan Library, 255 N. Main; at 2 p.m. at the Whitmore Library, 2197 E. Ft. Union Blvd, Cottonwood Heights; and at 4 p.m. at Utah Valley University’s Sorensen Student Center, 800 W, University Parkway, Orem.
Four public hearings are scheduled Saturday: at 8 a.m., Noyes Building Founders Hall, Snow College, 150 College Ave. East, Ephraim; at 10 a.m. at the Uintah County Library, 204 E. 100 North, Vernal; at 3 p.m. at Utah State University Eastern’s Jennifer Leavitt Student Center, 451 E. 400 North, Price; and at 8 p.m. in Southern Utah University’s Sharwan Smith Student Center, 351 W. University Blvd., Cedar City.
The hearings are required before the group may begin to gather the required 113,000 signatures needed to qualify for the ballot. The initiative seeks to use a direct primary election to choose the nominees from the major political parties, and totally eliminate the traditional caucus-convention system.
Initiative supports say the caucus-convention system is dominated by extremists in the political parties, and produces nominees who are outside the political mainstream. They say that problem would be eliminated by allowing all of a party’s voters to choose nominees through a primary, instead of a relatively few delegates.
Critics of the initiative say the change would help wealthy candidates, because campaigning in a primary can be expensive. They argue the caucus-convention system allows non-wealthy candidates to compete because they need to campaign only with a few hundred delegates.