- Scott Presler, who organized get-out-the-vote efforts for Trump in 2024, is in Utah to help Republicans gather signatures.
- The state GOP is running a ballot initiative to overturn the Proposition 4 redistricting law voters narrowly passed in 2018.
- More than 46,000 signatures have been verified but the GOP needs more than 140,000 by Feb. 14 to qualify for ballot.
The Utah Republican Party’s bid to reverse the 2018 ballot initiative known as Proposition 4 has attracted national attention from top members of the MAGA movement.
In October, Donald Trump Jr. called on activists to join the GOP’s paid signature-gatherer, Patriot Grassroots, to put the redistricting law back on the ballot in November 2026.
In December, Turning Point Action COO Tyler Bowyer said Charlie Kirk’s organization would participate directly in Utah politics for the first time by mobilizing voters on the issue.
And on Thursday, Scott Presler — the get-out-the-vote guru behind Pennsylvania’s 2024 GOP voter registration push — landed in Salt Lake City to help with the fight too.
“All of these forces are trying to restore Utah’s confidence in our elections, and really that their voices, not judges’, should be heard,” Presler said in a Deseret News interview.
Presler, who has been touring the country to work on different Republican efforts, is scheduled to attend four “Sign with Scott” events on Friday and Saturday.
The events will also be attended by Utah Reps. Burgess Owens, Celeste Maloy and Mike Kennedy, as well as Utah Attorney General Derek Brown and GOP chair Rob Axson.
Hosting the events is Utahns for Representative Government, the political interest committee created by Axson, Brown and other sponsors to help fund the campaign for the initiative.
How is signature gathering going?
To give Utah voters a second chance to weigh in on the state’s embattled redistricting law, sponsors must submit more than 140,000 verified signatures by Feb. 14.
As of Friday, the Utah Lieutenant Governor’s Office had recorded 46,710 signatures verified by county clerks with just under one month to go before the deadline.
This represents the first batch of signatures gathered between Nov. 15 and Dec. 15, said Austin Cox, who serves as the director of Utahns for Representative Government.
The committee has 30 days to turn in a signature packet once it is started. The county clerk then has 21 days to verify those signatures, with a final deadline of March 7.
Signature gathering happens door-to-door, or at storefronts, with the help of nearly 1,000 part-time volunteers and over 200 full-time professionals, according to Axson and Patriot Grassroots president Elijah Day.
Presler’s presence in the state, as well as shows of support from the Trump family and Turning Point, reflect the rising prominence of the Utah GOP after it helped to organize volunteers to help in other states, Axson said.
The party appreciates the national attention, from the White House and some of the most influential party activists in the country, who Axson said are driven by a desire to keep Utah voters, not the courts, in control.
“Scott Presler specifically is a very talented and patriotic American who believes in the importance of engaging every person possible,” Axson said. “He will be a tremendous asset to the momentum we need here in the state.”
What does Proposition 4 do?
After four years of litigation over the Legislature’s handling of Proposition 4, the GOP’s ballot initiative seeks to repeal the law that started it all when it passed by .34% in 2018.
The proposed initiative would strike out the state code that established a map-drawing commission and codified anti-gerrymandering restrictions for congressional boundaries.
In 2021, lawmakers adopted a map splitting Democratic voters in Salt Lake County after rejecting the commission’s recommendations — which they made nonbinding in 2020.
A subsequent lawsuit led to the Utah Supreme Court creating a new standard preventing the Legislature, in most cases, from amending initiatives that alter government.
Based on this, 3rd District Judge Dianna Gibson threw out Utah’s 2021 map, and later rejected legislators’ attempt at a re-do for violating her interpretation of partisan fairness.
Instead, Gibson chose a map submitted by nonprofit plaintiffs that created a deeply Democratic seat in Salt Lake County, and made the remaining seats more Republican.
Democrats, and Better Boundaries, the bipartisan group behind Proposition 4, have criticized the GOP’s initiative as a partisan ploy to return single-party control to the state.
“We will continue to defend Utahns’ right to pick their politicians and ensure fair representation,” Better Boundaries executive director Elizabeth Rasmussen said.
Presler’s advice for Utah
The key to achieving successful voter outreach over the next month — and the next nine months if signature gathering is successful — is education, Presler said.
The latest Deseret News/Hinckley Institute of Politics poll found that a large plurality of Utahns, 44%, are unsure about whether they support eliminating Proposition 4.
Presler framed the choice, not in terms of GOP representation in the U.S. House, but as a decision about whether Proposition 4 has played out as expected.
“If I voted for Prop 4, I’d be kind of angry as a Utahn,” Presler said. “You are supposed to have a recommended map ... and a rogue judge has decided for the people.”
Advocates for the new congressional map, including Gibson, argued Proposition 4 was intended to prevent lawmakers from slicing up the Democratic vote to limit representation.
Presler views the judge as straying from Proposition 4 by “trying to be the enforcer and creator of a law” that gives her the final authority over Utah’s congressional map.
Presler questions opposition to the GOP’s ballot initiative effort because it is using the same process that created Proposition 4 to see if it is still what Utah voters want.
“This is what democracy looks like,” Presler said. “And I think ultimately our effort to repeal Prop 4 is going to drive turnout for the 2026 midterm election, which I think everybody will benefit from.”