Utah Republicans are a third of the way to their goal of gathering nearly the signatures needed to let voters decide whether to restore the Legislature’s power to gerrymander congressional and legislative districts.
After two months of pounding the pavement, county clerks have validated 46,710 signatures so far, according to Friday’s update from the lieutenant governor’s office, which oversees elections. That leaves the Republicans with the daunting challenge of gathering the remaining 94,038 by Feb. 14 in order to hit the threshold to put the repeal of the Better Boundaries initiative on the November ballot.
The initiative created an independent redistricting commission and imposed guidelines for drawing boundaries for congressional, legislative and state school board seats. The Legislature attempted to repeal the initiative, which was approved by voters in 2018, but the Utah Supreme Court said doing so violated the citizens’ right to make law through the initiative process.
The party hopes that passing a repeal initiative would wipe out the law, dismantling the independent commission and prohibitions on drawing boundaries that favor Republicans over Democrats.
In addition to having a steep climb to meet the goal statewide, the GOP is also far from collecting the required number of signatures in specific Senate districts. State law requires that, in addition to the 140,748 signatures needed statewide to get an initiative on the ballot, proponents also have to meet specific targets in 26 of the 29 state Senate districts.
While the Republicans are a third of the way to meeting the statewide goal, they are less than a fifth of the way in 10 Senate districts.
For example, while the party only has about 900 signatures left to collect in Senate District 27 in southcentral Utah, supporters are still more than 4,000 signatures short in eight Senate districts and need to reach their target in at least five of those in order to make it onto the ballot.
The numbers from the lieutenant governor’s office only reflect signatures that have already been verified by county clerks. Others are in process or may have been collected but not submitted.
This week, the party’s Political Issues Committee, Utahns for Representative Government, reported that all $4.3 million of its funding came from the same Trump-affiliated dark money group, Securing American Greatness, Inc., based in Massachusetts. All of the money, except for a $500 processing fee, was paid to Patriot Grassroots for paid signature gatherers.
Ultimately, Republicans are trying to undo a decision by 3rd District Judge Dianna Gibson, who ruled that the congressional map that had been in place since 2021 failed to comply with voters’ 2018 Better Boundaries initiative and needed to be redrawn.
Gibson then rejected the Legislature’s second attempt at a map and chose boundaries recommended by the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, which create a Democrat-leaning district in Salt Lake County. Republican legislators have said they plan to challenge Gibson’s ruling, but if that appeal fails, the initiative becomes the fallback option.
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.