After three months of signature-gathering that featured allegations of deception, intimidation and violence, a Republican-backed group delivered its final packets Sunday and now waits to see if it will be enough to put an initiative on the November ballot asking voters to repeal the state’s ban on partisan gerrymandering.
“We are well over 200,000 signatures that have been submitted. We have met the threshold,” said Rob Axson, chair of the Utah Republican Party and the organizer of Utahns for Representative Government, the group pushing for the repeal of Proposition 4.
In Salt Lake County, Axson helped unload four large plastic totes and a few bankers boxes filled with packets. Davis County received about 450 packets, according to Davis County Clerk Brian McKenzie. And in Utah County, URFG delivered 659 packets, according to Utah County Clerk Aaron Davidson.
Each packet can have up to 100 signatures — although typically not all of the packet is filled.
As of Friday, the group had nearly 89,000 validated signatures of support, meaning if 52,000 are ultimately verified in the next three weeks — and they meet specific targets in 26 of the state’s 29 senate districts — the repeal of the Better Boundaries initiative will qualify for the ballot.
“With what’s in our control, we are confident. We knew the requirement and we engaged and executed a strategy to exceed those requirements,” Axson said.
Elizabeth Rasmussen, executive director for Better Boundaries, said voters made clear they wanted Proposition 4 and it is closely monitoring the signature-gathering effort.
“Regardless of the outcome, our organization remains committed to upholding the will of the voters and will take every appropriate step to ensure their decision is honored,” she said.
If UFRG does end up coming up short, it would be a crushing embarrassment for the Republican group that pulled out all of the stops down the stretch, with President Donald Trump, U.S. Sen. Mike Lee, Gov. Spencer Cox and other influencers urging voters to sign the petition in an effort to restore the Legislature’s ability to draw districts that would create four safe GOP seats.
“We’re in the final stretch to put the repeal of Prop 4 on the ballot in Utah!,” Vice President JD Vance posted to social media on Saturday. “I hope more Utahns will join President Trump and Senator Mike Lee in this very important effort to KEEP UTAH RED.”
If it does qualify for the ballot, it will be up to voters to decide whether they want to keep Proposition 4 in place.
A recent poll by the conservative Sutherland Institute found that 85% of Utahns want an independent commission involved in redistricting. And a poll by Better Boundaries found that nearly two-thirds wanted Proposition 4 to remain in place.
Last week, UFRG asked the Utah Supreme Court to grant an emergency extension, pushing the deadline to Tuesday, arguing that opponents had employed intimidation and violence to discourage people from signing petitions and that hundreds of signatures had been stolen or destroyed.
The justices denied the request Friday.
Axson said the request for the extension was an attempt to raise “critical issues that I think were unfair and inappropriate,” and not out of concern they would come up short.
To qualify, UFRG, who was backed by millions of out-of-state dollars, will have to get 140,748 total signatures — 8% of all registered voters in the state — and they have to meet that percentage threshold in 26 of the 29 state senate districts.
As of Friday, they had reached that tally in just four southern Utah districts and were less than halfway to the finish line in 10 Wasatch Front districts, according to data from the lieutenant governor’s office.
Clerks have three weeks to finish verifying the signatures on the packets are from valid voters.
Sunday afternoon, Salt Lake County Republican Party Chair Mike Carey and a group of volunteers had set up a table outside the clerk’s offices to gather last-minute signatures while paid and volunteer signature gatherers filed in to deliver their last packets. He characterized the late signature gathering as “running up the score.”
Bob Barr said he came out to try to make sure that people who came to sign were not being misled — tactics he said he had seen from signature gatherers outside of grocery stores and at parks.
“I don’t claim to be a Democrat or a Republican,” he said. “But I am for being honest and truthful and doing it the right way.”
UFRG launched their initiative effort in October, seeking to undo 2018’s Proposition 4 — the voter-passed initiative that created an independent redistricting commission, established neutral criteria for setting political boundaries and prohibited manipulating the districts to favor one party over the other.
The Legislature largely gutted the initiative, and a group of voters along with the League of Women Voters and Mormon Women for Ethical Government sued. In 2024 the Utah Supreme Court unanimously ruled that repealing a citizen initiative effectively deprives voters of the constitutionally guaranteed right to make law through the initiative process.
Third District Judge Dianna Gibson subsequently ruled that “Proposition 4 is the law in Utah,” and, because the congressional districts adopted by the Legislature in 2021 did not comply with the constraints in the law, the map needed to be redrawn.
The Legislature’s second attempt also failed to meet the law’s guidelines, Gibson ruled, and she chose a map submitted by the plaintiffs with the Salt Lake County-centered district that favors Democrats by as much as 17 percentage points.
Republican officials are appealing those rulings, both to the Utah Supreme Court and in federal court.
Simultaneously, UFRG began its push for a ballot initiative to repeal Proposition 4. If it gets on the ballot and is approved, it would not change the boundaries for the 2026 election but would allow Republican legislators to redraw the maps after that and gerrymander the districts any way they see fit.
Even after the signatures are verified by the clerks, opponents will have 45 days to contact signers and try to convince them to rescind their support.
In 2018, for example, the Count My Vote initiative narrowly met the requirements to qualify for the ballot, but opponents of the measure managed to knock off enough signatures to keep it off the ballot.
Better Boundaries and other groups have already begun contacting voters and encouraging them to submit the required form with their county clerks to withdraw their signatures.
Salt Lake County Clerk Lannie Chapman said her office has received about 1,300 requests for signature removal, some of which are still being processed. By comparison, when labor groups turned in more than 300,000 signatures statewide for a referendum to repeal an anti-union law, she said her office received 12 removal forms.
Update, 6:20 p.m. • This story has been updated to include additional details.