Latter-day Saint churchgoers may not have registered the political bombshell that went off during services last week when it happened — such things are usually delivered in calm tones, not oratory bombast.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ governing First Presidency sent out a letter to be read from the pulpit last weekend — and where it wasn’t, it’s likely to be read there soon — urging church members to “spend time needed to become informed about the issues and candidates you will be considering.”
Here’s the bombshell part: The First Presidency further urged Latter-day Saints not to vote using straight-ticket balloting — the option of checking one box to automatically vote for candidates of a single party in every race.
“Merely voting a straight ticket or voting based on ‘tradition’ without careful study of candidates and their positions on important issues,” the letter read, “is a threat to democracy and inconsistent with revealed standards,” pointing to a verse from the faith’s scriptural canon.
For decades, voting straight ticket was a common practice for Utah voters. Even after the practice was discontinued, under a law signed by then-Gov. Gary Herbert in 2020, it is still a habit for some to just check boxes based on the letter next to each candidate’s name. Because the majority of Utahns consider themselves conservative, that letter more often than not is “R” for Republican.
One scholar of Latter-day Saint doctrine told The Tribune’s Bryan Schott that the shift was a major one, and was written more directly than the wording usually used by the church’s leaders.
“It’s very explicit about the idea that we shouldn’t use political affiliation as a proxy for the correct person,” said Sam Brunson, a law professor at Loyola University Chicago, who writes the popular Latter-day Saint-centered website By Common Consent.
“In Utah, especially among Mormons, what that means is just because there’s an ‘R’ beside their name doesn’t mean you need to vote for them,” Brunson said. “It doesn’t say you should vote for a Democrat, by any means, but it very explicitly says just because they’re a Republican doesn’t mean that they’re the best person that you should vote for.”
While the church’s leadership often stresses that its comments regarding civic engagement are, like the church, international — look at the recent updates on the church’s policies on political neutrality, which Brunson wrote were “marginal” compared with the previous policies — the effects of its decision on straight-ticket voting may likely be felt closer to home.
For generations, there has been almost no daylight between the church and the Republican Party. This goes back, at least, to Ezra Taft Benson, who — before he became the church’s president and prophet in 1985 — was Dwight Eisenhower’s Secretary of Agriculture and a vocal anti-Communist. Benson, back in 1974, famously said a good Latter-day Saint “if he is to follow the Gospel” would find it difficult to be a liberal Democrat.
Those who read the tea leaves in leaders’ talks at the church’s General Conference saw a little space between church and party in an April 2021 talk by President Dallin H. Oaks, first counselor in the First Presidency. In his talk — which happened, coincidentally or not, at the first General Conference after the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol — said that defending the Constitution may require members to buck their partisan political affiliation.
“There are many political issues, and no party, platform or individual candidate can satisfy all personal preferences,” Oaks said. “Each citizen must therefore decide which issues are most important to him or her at any particular time. … Such independent actions will sometimes require voters to support candidates or political parties or platforms whose other positions they cannot approve.”
Observers of the Latter-day Saint leadership have questioned whether the stance on straight-ticket voting — like its political neutrality policies — is aimed at the faith’s younger members, who are veering away from the GOP.
Just over half of college-age Latter-day Saints align with the Republicans, compared to 70% of members hitting retirement age, according to data released in April by Ryan Burge, a political science teacher at Eastern Illinois University. Some of that shift, Burge and others speculated, may have been the party’s lurch to the right — after all, the Republicans went, in four years, from Mitt Romney to Donald Trump as their presidential standard-bearer.
Nobody is expecting Utah’s political landscape to shift from red to blue instantaneously with the church’s iteration of this policy. Republicans have won every statewide election since 1998. The supermajority the GOP holds in the Utah Legislature guarantees that district lines are drawn so that Republican candidates for Congress and the Legislature have an advantage — one that the current congressional delegation is quietly defending to the state’s Supreme Court, against accusations of gerrymandering.
Republican power is so strong in Utah that the GOP-dominated Legislature will this week consider moving this year’s municipal elections — originally scheduled for the traditional first Tuesday after the first Monday of November — back two weeks, all so Rep. Chris Stewart’s soon-to-be-vacated congressional seat can be filled that much sooner. With the way the 2nd District is drawn, presumably won by a Republican.
For those who believe voters should choose their officials — rather than the officials choosing their voters — the Latter-day Saint leaders’ stance against straight-ticket voting is a welcome sign that faith leaders are showing faith in the people.
The church’s Doctrine and Covenants 98:10 says that, when it comes to running the government, “honest men and wise men should be sought for diligently, and good men and wise men ye should observe to uphold.” We agree — though, like Angelica Schuyler in “Hamilton,” we’d include women in the sequel.
To seek such honest and wise people, voters — whatever their religious persuasion — must study up on the candidates and the issues, to separate the lies and hyperbole from the truth. We can recommend a newsroom that can help.
