The Utah Republican Party’s bid to repeal a 2018 ballot initiative — which created an independent redistricting commission and banned partisan gerrymandering — got its first status check this week, showing the GOP 9% of the way toward reaching its goal.
The lieutenant governor’s office posted the first batch of validated signatories of the party’s petition to repeal the Better Boundaries initiative this week.
So far, 12,635 signatures have been submitted and verified by the county clerks. The party needs to collect 140,748 signatures and meet specific thresholds in 26 of the state’s 29 Senate districts for the repeal effort to qualify for the 2026 ballot.
The GOP has until Feb. 14 to gather those signatures.
The party launched its initiative effort in response to a series of court rulings finding that the Legislature violated the Utah Constitution when it gutted the Better Boundaries initiative, reinstating the citizen-enacted law.
With the law back in place, a judge determined that the Legislature’s congressional boundaries did not comply with the initiative and directed lawmakers to draw a new map.
The judge later ruled that the new map didn’t comply with the initiative, either and imposed boundaries for the 2026 election that create a Democratic-leaning seat in the northern part of Salt Lake County.
The party’s signature-gathering efforts are being bankrolled by a “dark money” group — which does not have to disclose its donors — that is affiliated with President Donald Trump.
Utah Republicans have received more than $4.3 million and used it to hire paid signature gatherers, some of them from outside the state, to augment its team of volunteers.
If the party collects enough valid signatures, voters will decide next November whether to repeal the Better Boundaries initiative. It would not impact the congressional map used in the 2026 election but would give the Legislature the latitude to redraw the map in the future without any input from an independent redistricting commission or a prohibition on the map favoring one party over the other.