The Utah Republican Party’s effort to do away with Utah’s Independent Redistricting Commission and to once again allow partisan gerrymandering continues to make headway toward qualifying for the 2026 ballot, but support appears to be lagging in parts of northern Utah.
As of Friday, three weeks into the verification process, Utah Republicans backing the effort have had 26,689 signatures validated, putting them 19% of the way to their overall goal of collecting 140,784 signatures statewide.
In addition to the statewide goal, however, Republicans need to obtain signatures from 8% of the registered voters in 26 of the 29 state Senate districts — and they are struggling in Weber and Davis counties and some surrounding areas, potentially posing a challenge to reaching the ballot.
In southern Utah, the party is seeing solid progress. In Sen. Derrin Owens’ sprawling District 27 in south-central Utah, for example, proponents of the repeal are halfway to the 5,696 signatures needed. And in Sen. Don Ipson’s District 29, in the southwest corner of the state, 42% of the 5,382 signatures needed have been validated.
It’s a different story farther north, where Republicans are less than 10% of the way to their goal in seven Senate districts. In Senate District 7, represented by Senate President J. Stuart Adams, R-Layton, the GOP is 5.5% of the way to the goal.
That could be due partly to holiday delays in the labor-intensive verification process.
Weber County Clerk-Auditor Ricky Hatch pointed to a combination of low signatures and holiday staffing. His office received 50 packets last week and had processed 15 of them as of Friday. The rest will be validated next week.
The Davis County clerk did not immediately respond to a message Friday.
Republicans have until Feb. 14 to submit all of their signatures for validation, and clerks will have until March 7 to finish checking the petitions.
The party launched its initiative effort in response to a series of court rulings finding that the Republican-dominated Legislature violated the Utah Constitution when it gutted the Better Boundaries initiative. Third District Judge Dianna Gibson then reinstated the voter-enacted law.
With the law back in place, Gibson 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 anti-gerrymandering law and imposed boundaries for the 2026 election that created a Democratic-leaning seat in the northern part of Salt Lake County.
The party is using hundreds of volunteers and also hired signature gatherers. A number of Utahns have complained that at least some collectors are using misleading tactics to trick people into signing the petitions. In those cases, voters can file a form with their county clerks, asking to have their signatures removed.
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 another.
According to a recent poll commissioned by the conservative Sutherland Institute, 85% of registered Utah voters want an independent commission involved in the redistricting process — 40% want the commission’s role to be advisory, while 45% say the Legislature should have to choose from maps recommended by the commission.