The Commissioner's Report
| Jurisdiction | Utah,United States |
| Citation | Vol. 11 No. 4 Pg. 6 |
| Pages | 6 |
| Publication year | 1998 |
Take Me to Your Leader
Denise A. Dragoo
As a member of the Utah State Bar, you may be surprised to learn that you do not elect your President. A President-Elect is chosen from the Board of Bar Commissioners through a process which effectively forecloses direct participation by Bar members. Under this quasi representational system, the Bar members elect eleven Commissioners from five districts throughout the State who then choose a President-Elect. The only direct input of members into this process is to vote against the pre-selected candidate in a "retention election." The President-Elect selected by less than .0021% of the Bar can be rejected only by a vote of more than 50% of our membership.
Currently members have no direct vote for President-Elect and have an ineffective veto power. Therefore, it is essential that the elected Bar Commissioners are representative of the electorate. Unfortunately, Commissioners are not apportioned to the members who elect them on a one-person/one-vote basis. The allocation of Commissioners to voting members is skewed such that a member in the First District has essentially five times the voting clout of a member in the more populous Third District. There are 91 active members in the First District represented by one commissioner and 3,494 voting members in the Third District represented by seven Commissioners (approximately 500 members per Commissioner). While this malapportionment does not affect the judicial and administrative powers of the Bar Commission, it clearly distorts its electoral functions. See, Sullivan v. Alabama State Bar, 295 F.Supp 1216 (M.D. Ala.), aff'd without opinion, 394 U.S. 812 (1969).
Recognizing the need for reform in the electoral process, the Bar Commission formed an elections procedure committee to study the issue. The recommendations of the committee were presented in 1997 to avoid conflict with the 1998 election for President-Elect.[1] The committee recommended: (1) direct election of the President-Elect by the members at large, (2) elimination of the retention election, and (3) reapportionment of elected Commissioners to reflect one person one vote.
DIRECT ELECTION OF PRESIDENT-ELECT
Currently, to be qualified for President-Elect, a candidate must be a lawyer in good standing with the Utah State Bar and an elected member of the Commission. Ex officio and public members of the Board are not...
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