As legislative Republicans try to overturn a judge’s redistricting ruling in court, the Utah GOP is creeping closer to its goal of putting an initiative on the 2026 ballot to overturn a ban on partisan gerrymandering — but there’s still a long way to go.
As of Friday, the Republican-backed Utahns for Representative Government has gathered 37,309 of the 140,748 signatures needed to put the repeal of Proposition 4 — also known as the 2018 Better Boundaries initiative — before voters.
That is a little over a quarter of the way to the ultimate goal with five weeks remaining to submit signatures for verification.
Signature gathering remains strong in the southern part of the state but lags in northern Utah. That matters because, in addition to the statewide total, Republicans have to hit specific targets in 26 of the 29 state Senate districts.
While they are nearly two-thirds of the way to that goal in one southern Utah Senate district, they are less than 11% of the way there in five northern Utah districts.
Meantime, on Thursday, Republican lawmakers filed a notice of their intent to appeal 3rd District Judge Dianna Gibson’s ruling that threw out Utah’s old congressional boundaries and directed lawmakers to draw new ones.
Gibson recently questioned why the Legislature had not filed its appeal sooner and cleared the path for part of the case to go to the Utah Supreme Court.
But Gibson structured her order in such a way that the Legislature cannot appeal the judge’s decision to reject lawmakers’ redrawn congressional map, nor her decision to instead pick a map submitted by the plaintiffs that creates a Democratic-leaning district in Salt Lake County.
The Legislature moved the filing window for congressional candidates to mid-March in hopes it can prevail before the Supreme Court and avoid the map Gibson chose from taking effect for the 2026 election.
If they fail, the Republican Party’s initiative to repeal Prop 4 becomes the fallback. If the repeal question ends up on the ballot and is approved by voters in November, the Legislature would presumably be able to draw a new map for the 2028 election without limitations on how much it favors Republicans over Democrats.
To get the initiative on the ballot, the party is using hundreds of volunteers and 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.
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.