After legislation is favorably recommended by a standing committee, the next level of vetting for a bill or resolution is the full Utah House of Representatives or Utah Senate. An example can best illustrate how that next step in the legislative process plays out.

If a bill beginning in the House is favorably passed out of a House standing committee, it is then placed on a list of bills and resolutions scheduled to be considered and/or voted on by all representatives in the House. This is often called a floor vote.

When a bill or resolution comes up for a floor vote in the House, it is discussed and debated by the representatives. Amendments or substitute legislation may be offered to address concerns, and the process can be paused if needed – referred to as circling a bill – without the bill losing its place in the line of bills and resolutions for consideration. Circling may occur to make time to draft amendments and resolve concerns raised during the floor debate.

When discussion and debate about a bill or resolution has concluded, the bill may be voted on by all representatives. If the bill receives support from a majority of representatives (38 of the 75), it is sent to the Senate for further consideration.

When a House bill arrives in the Senate, the Senate Rules Committee will send it to a Senate standing committee. Should the legislation pass favorably out of that committee, it is placed on a list of bills and resolutions to be considered for a Senate floor vote. 

Unlike the House, two Senate floor votes are typically required, on two separate days, for a bill to pass the Senate. If the bill or resolution receives support from a majority of senators (15 out of 29) in both floor votes, the bill passes the Senate.

In the closing days of the legislative session, exceptions are often made to a few of these steps in the legislative process. For instance, the rule requiring two Senate floor votes may be suspended and bills passed with only one Senate floor vote, and a House bill arriving in the Senate late in the session may be put directly on the list of bills to be considered for a floor vote instead of being sent to a Senate standing committee.

Should a House bill successfully pass the Senate, it moves forward in one of two ways. If the bill was not amended or substituted by the Senate standing committee or as part of a Senate floor vote, it is sent to the governor for review before potentially becoming a law. If a House bill is amended or substituted in the Senate, the House must concur with the changes made to the bill before it can go to the governor.

If the House refuses to concur with the Senate amendments, then a negotiated compromise on the legislation must be agreed to by an appointed team of representatives and senators. Any compromise is then brought back to both the full House and Senate, and if it passes both bodies it then goes to the governor.

This process works the same if the bill or resolution originates in the Senate, except that it goes from the Senate to the House and then, if passed, to the governor.

Differences between the House and the Senate are based in part on differences in how members of each are elected. All representatives combined, and all senators combined, represent the same total number of Utah voters. However, no single senator represents the same number and mix of voters as any representative, and vice versa.

A state senator represents one of 29 districts, each with just over 112,000 Utah residents. Utah state senators each serve a four-year term before having to seek re-election. A state representative, on the other hand, represents one of 75 districts, each with about 43,000 Utah residents. Utah state representatives each serve a two-year term before having to seek re-election.

The different numbers and geographic combinations of voters, along with the differing terms of office in the House and Senate, create political and electoral dynamics that can influence policymaking. All members of the Utah House may feel a particular political pressure in policymaking during an election year that only half of senators up for re-election may feel, for example. Alternatively, if the parts of at least three House districts within each Senate district are made up of groups of voters that think and vote differently, then the viewpoint, comments and votes of a state senator may vary from any of the state representatives whose districts overlap with the Senate district.

The forces that these varied, and sometimes competing, political dynamics create often leads to legislation being viewed differently, for different reasons, by the House and Senate. The majority of the time, those differences force sponsors and supporters of legislation to fulfill the design of the legislative process: achieve a broad consensus in order to pass a bill or resolution. 

This is part of the political genius of the nation’s Founders: creating legislative representation of the same group of voters in multiple ways so that no single group of voters would be likely to dominate policymaking in every arena. Utah’s founders borrowed from that genius when drafting the Utah Constitution. The process stemming from this design of the Utah House of Representatives and Utah Senate often requires legislative compromise with the goal of gaining sufficient consensus on a legislative issue to be able to enact a new law.