Republican battle to repeal Utah redistricting law races to finish line

Utahns for Representative Government, the committee organized by Utah GOP chair Rob Axson, has until 5 p.m. on Sunday to submit enough petition packets to qualify for the November ballot.

This comes after the Utah Supreme Court on Friday denied a request to postpone the signature submission deadline for the Republican effort to repeal Utah’s Proposition 4 redistricting law.

As the clock ticks down, GOP volunteers and paid signature gatherers worked to persuade Utahns to give Prop 4 a second look even as Better Boundaries — the group behind the law — asked Utah voters to remove their signatures from petitions.

Over the past three months, the GOP’s bid to fight one ballot initiative with another has boiled over into a bitter brawl about who should draw Utah’s congressional maps and how citizen-initiated legislation should be implemented.

One thing both sides agree on is that the attempt has also demonstrated just how ugly direct democracy can get.

The campaign has been plagued by aggression against signature gatherers, claims of misleading tactics and high-profile interventions from MAGA superstars, bringing a new level of national attention to Beehive State redistricting.

This month, Turning Point Action — the turnout operation founded by conservative organizer Charlie Kirk, who was killed in Utah last September — sent its get-out-the-vote infrastructure to Utah for the first time.

At a cold “Super Chase” event on Thursday, Turning Point’s inaugural representative for Utah said the initiative represents both a backlash against judges choosing congressional boundaries and a battle over congressional control.

Turning Point Action’s involvement, Kelsey Newberry said, also reflects the challenge Utah Republicans face to convince Utahns to weigh in for a second time on the state’s messy, yearslong Prop 4 saga.

“We really wanted that final push to get people motivated to get us across that finish line,” Newberry told the Deseret News. “Because it’s going to be down to the wire.”

In 2018, the Better Boundaries initiative to establish a map-drawing commission closely divided Utahns. Now, the GOP’s attempt to repeal it shows the redistricting fight remains as chaotic for Utah voters as ever.

11th-hour request denied

In a last-ditch move, Utahns for Representative Government asked the Utah Supreme Court on Wednesday to delay their due date for two or three extra days to make up for stolen signatures and shifting district thresholds.

The petitioners justified the extension by citing at least 50 reports of harassment, including one case of assault, against signature gatherers that resulted in the destruction or disappearance of around 300 signatures.

The request also cited a notification last week from the Lieutenant Governor’s Office updating the number of required signatures in key districts by nearly 400 following a calculation error made by the elections office.

On Friday, Utah Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson asked the court to deny the request because it was filed too late, did not fall under the court’s jurisdiction and because the complaints did not prevent them from meeting the deadline.

The Utah Supreme Court agreed with Henderson’s arguments, saying in an expedited ruling that Utahns for Representative Government failed to prove their request to shift the deadline to Feb. 18 was timely or warranted.

Race to the finish line

Utahns for Representative Government has until Feb. 15 at 5 p.m. to submit signatures. Henderson’s office confirmed they have coordinated with county clerks across the state to ensure an official is present to receive petition packets.

Once packets are received, clerks have 21 days to verify every signature, with the final day falling on March 7. Clerks will have their work cut out for them during those three weeks, according to Utah County Clerk Aaron Davidson.

As of Friday morning, 88,948 verified signatures had been recorded. While “tens of thousands” have been submitted but not verified, Axson said, that still leaves a significant margin before hitting the required 140,748.

“There’s a third more packets,” Davidson said. “So if they meet their number of packets, we’ll have a big job to do.”

The verification process entails counting the total number of signatures in each packet, before going through each packet manually to decipher writing, confirm identities and compare signatures to those on record.

Signatures can be rejected at any of those steps. So far, the petition to repeal Prop 4 has a rejection rate of around 23% statewide, similar to the rate for last year’s petition to repeal a ban on public sector collective bargaining, Davidson said

What does support for Prop 4 look like?

The GOP strategy to put Prop 4 back on the ballot always anticipated “building towards this crescendo moment,” with more packets being dropped off at the end, according to Axson, who said the petition is “in a very good spot.”

To hit its target, Utahns for Representative Government has mobilized around 1,000 volunteers and 500 paid Patriot Grassroots signature gatherers to approach voters at store fronts, rec centers and front doors asking for support.

For the final 11 days of the three-month petition period, Turning Point Action has also lent its social media presence and canvassing expertise, with seven events spanning the Wasatch Front before Sunday’s deadline.

Freezing temperatures and rain did not stop Turning Point Action from seeking signatures in Midvale on Thursday at an event featuring a poster of Kirk under one of his trademark fold-up tents, along with stickers and Chick-fil-A.

Salt Lake City resident Gordon Gurr said he braved the weather, in a 2002 Winter Olympics Games jacket signed by Mitt Romney, because Prop 4 created a process giving unaccountable judges too much power over map boundaries.

Midvale residents Susan and Craig Gregersen, dressed in clothes memorializing Kirk, said their reason for signing had less to do with separation of powers and more to do with what they see as increasing Democratic influence in Utah.

“It needs to be fixed because, like I say, if we don’t, we’re going to probably have Democrats take over the state,” Craig said.

Like she has done nearly every day for three months, Newberry, who previously worked as a paid signature gatherer for Patriot Grassroots in Utah and Arizona, spent a few hours on Thursday going door-to-door.

Her pitch on the porch of Nicasio Perna was that “a judge overnight decided to redistrict Utah” and “gave two House seats to the Democrats” — an apparent reference to a November order selecting a map with one Democratic seat.

After Riley Beesley, vice chair of the Utah Federation of College Republicans, added that the petition would reaffirm the Legislature’s constitutional redistricting authority, and displayed the initiative language, Perna signed.

As did Perna’s neighbor, Trent Wilkerson, who said he had received conflicting accounts of what the petition did. Wilkerson signed after Beesley said it would give Utahns a second, more educated opportunity to vote on Prop 4.

The coordinated counter campaign

The original sponsors of Prop 4 oppose the effort to repeal it. Last week, Better Boundaries announced a campaign to encourage voters to remove their signatures.

The nonprofit has sent thousands of letters providing voters with a form to request that their county clerk rescind their names from what they label “a pro-gerrymandering petition” to put Prop 4 back on the ballot.

“Voters deserve to know what they’ve signed and so we’re going to continue to make sure that we’re protecting the anti-gerrymandering measures that we have already seen approved by Utah voters,” deputy director Bethany Crisp said.

The signature removal campaign appears well-funded, with extensive social media outreach, a Democratic PR firm and a fresh website, protectutahvoters.com, paid for by a political issues committee, Utahns Protecting Our Constitution.

The unprecedented effort in Utah has produced “by far” the most signature removals of any ballot initiative petition Salt Lake County Clerk Lannie Chapman has ever seen, totaling 1,260 removal requests out of roughly 21,200 signatures.

This removal rate of roughly 6% was much higher than the number recorded in other major counties. Davis County has received just over 200 removal requests out of 4,500 signatures, and Weber has received 270 out of 8,500.

The rate in deeply red counties like Utah and Washington has been even lower, around 1%, with around 390 requests out of 33,340 signatures in Utah County and 115 requests out of roughly 11,500 signatures in Washington County.

Ann Florence has been a vocal advocate of Prop 4 since it was first proposed. The Salt Lake City resident attended Turning Point Action’s Thursday event to confirm signature gatherers were following proper procedure.

“I’m just suspicious. There are people here from out of state,” Florence said. “And I think they’re also not telling the truth.”

Complaints have been made by voters who report signature gathers made inaccurate statements to score signatures. Some gatherers have characterized the initiative as trying to “stop gerrymandering” or “remove the crooked judge.”

What’s next in Utah’s redistricting saga?

Utah’s ballot initiative brouhaha has many points of origin.

Legislative reforms to Prop 4. A Supreme Court ruling giving initiatives elevated status. A district judge rejecting lawmakers’ maps as gerrymanders and replacing them with a map submitted by nonprofit advocacy groups.

The legal battle, and subsequent political fallout, has revealed fundamental disagreements over the nature of Utah’s structure of government and allegations of partisan influence in the redistricting process from both sides.

“Better Boundaries of 2018 is very different than Better Boundaries of 2026,” Axson said. “Utahns deserve more than chaotic confusion and constitutional crisis. Let’s remove all of that by giving back to Utahns the decision.”

Critics allege the effort has been driven by party politics all along. As the first stage of Axson’s project comes to an end, the repeal has seen endorsements from President Donald Trump, Ted Nugent, Donald Trump Jr. and Scott Presler.

If the petition succeeds, Utah’s ballot initiative battle may only intensify. Both Turning Point Action and Better Boundaries committed to double down on their investments if the redistricting law comes up for a vote in November.