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After unsubstantiated allegations of shenanigans by people paid to gather signatures to allow candidates to qualify for the ballot, legislation is proceeding to ban such paid gatherers.

The House Government Operations Committee voted 5-3 Thursday to endorse HB22 by Rep. Brian Greene, R-Pleasant Grove, and sent it to the full House for consideration.

Originally the bill was an attempt to more tightly regulate such signature gathering, but the committee amended it to also outlaw paid signature gathering — a method many candidates use because of the high threshold to make the ballot. Gov. Gary Herbert and Sen. Mike Lee, among others, hired professional petition-passing companies to secure about 28,000 signatures to get on the ballot.

"We heard stories about people claiming to be gathering signatures door to door for purposes other than what it was for," Greene told the committee, including for different candidates or issues. People who did not read the petitions closely, he said, were fooled.

Greene was an opponent of SB54, a compromise measure that allowed candidates to get on a primary ballot by gathering signatures. Last year he was forced into a primary by a challenger who used this petition method to get on the ballot.

His bill includes civil penalties of up to $100 for each signature gathered in violation of the law, and criminal violations that could be for up to a year in jail.

Rep. Merrill Nelson, R-Grantsville, warned that banning paid signature gatherers could essentially eliminate the option of gathering signatures to qualify for the ballot instead of going through the convention-caucus system.

But Rep. Rebecca Chavez-Houck, D-Salt Lake City, said she managed to gather enough signatures with volunteers in just one week — so it is possible, although her district is relatively compact.

The bill also would require signature gatherers to wear hats, shirts or badges showing clearly for whom they are gathering signatures.

It also allows people to remove signatures from petitions any time up to Feb. 20, the earliest time that petitions could be verified under law. Greene said some tried to remove signatures after shenanigans last year, and found they legally could not.

Spencer Stokes, a founder of the signature-gathering firm Gather, said the bill appears to him to be a clear attempt to thwart SB54 — a legislative compromise to create an alternate path to the ballot outside the party caucus-convention system and one that has survived a lengthy Utah Republican Party court challenge.

"It's an attempt to not allow the public access directly to the ballot," Stokes said of the bill. "It really kind of goes against freedom of speech."

Stokes also took issue with Greene's characterization of rampant mischief and fraud in the signature-gathering process, saying 90 percent of complaints are unfounded and most of the rest are handled internally by the companies involved. "The only thing you have is your credibility in this business," he said.