As of now, backers of an initiative to repeal Utah’s ban on partisan gerrymandering have enough support to qualify for the ballot, but the margin continues to dwindle, despite Republican legislators’ hasty change to Utah law making it more difficult for voters to rescind their support.

With Thursday’s updated tally, opposition groups need to convince 115 more voters in one state Senate District to withdraw their support for the initiative to keep the repeal initiative off the November ballot.

But they have had to shift their tactics after the GOP lawmakers, in the final hour of the legislative session, added a provision requiring clerks to disqualify signature removal forms received in an envelope with pre-paid postage.

For over a month, Better Boundaries and the Brave Utahns Rapid Response Network, two groups opposing the GOP-led effort to repeal Proposition 4’s ban on partisan gerrymandering, had been distributing tens of thousands of removal forms along with envelopes with pre-paid postage to make it easier for voters to withdraw their support for the initiative.

The GOP-backed Utahns for Representative Government sued, arguing that distributing envelopes with pre-paid postage or pre-stamped envelopes constituted an illegal 73-cent bribe meant to induce voters to withdraw their support.

Just after 11 p.m. on the final night of the session, Republican lawmakers amended a bill to prohibit county clerks from accepting forms returned in pre-paid envelopes. It was sent to Gov. Spencer Cox just after 2 a.m. on March 7 and he signed it into law soon after. The ban took effect immediately upon his signature.

UFRG dismissed its lawsuit days later.

Salt Lake County Clerk Lannie Chapman said Wednesday she had received about 285 removal forms that have had to be disqualified since the pre-paid postage ban became law.

“That was quite the pivot, right in the middle of verifying both the [signature] packets and the removals,” Chapman said. “[Voters] could have put it in the mail Friday night or Saturday morning, not knowing the governor” would act so quickly.

According to the latest update from the lieutenant governor’s office, UFRG still easily has enough signatures statewide to get the repeal on the November ballot. But UFRG also has to meet specific targets in 26 of the state’s 29 Senate districts, which it currently has, but the margin is slipping.

Senate District 15, which includes parts of Midvale, Sandy and Cottonwood Heights, currently has the narrowest cushion. A week ago, UFRG had met the mark with 658 signatures to spare, but in the past seven days, 544 voters in the district have withdrawn their names. If UFRG loses 115 more in the next month, the repeal will fail to make it to the ballot.

Statewide, roughly 8,300 voters have removed their signatures.

Chapman said the 285 forms she received that were postmarked after the law took effect and are now invalid have been set aside, and, if time permits, her office will notify those individuals, so they can remove their signature another way.

“At the end of the day,” Chapman said, “we want to make sure their voices are heard — either through the petition if their name is on it and they want it there or if they’ve had a change of heart and they want to remove their signature.”

Sarah McConkie, one of the BURRN organizers, said her group spent thousands of dollars on stamps for envelopes and had been setting up tables in parks, giving out cookies and talking to voters about removing their signatures. (In order to avoid being accused of bribing voters, individuals did not need to remove their signatures in order to get a cookie.)

But McConkie said she woke up the morning after the end of the legislative session and read that the governor had signed the postage ban into law and thought, “Well, that changes everything.”

Her group is still running the booths and talking to people about the repeal effort, but now volunteers will collect the forms and return them to the clerk in person or tell the voters how to return the forms themself.

Better Boundaries Executive Director Elizabeth Rasmussen said the law has forced her group to shift its efforts, but her group is still hearing from voters who claim they were tricked into signing the petitions and want their names removed.

“It’s unfortunate that they passed a law directly targeting voters’ ability to remove their signatures,” she said. “It’s very blatant what they did. It was a direct attack on a program we put in place in response to fraud and misinformation.”

Rob Axson, chair of UFRG and the Utah Republican Party, did not respond to a request for comment.

If the repeal effort is pushed below the threshold in any of the 26 districts, it will not qualify for the November ballot.

If it does qualify and voters repeal Proposition 4 — which created an independent redistricting commission and banned gerrymandering — it would not impact the boundaries for the 2026 election, but it would allow lawmakers to redraw the maps any way they choose for 2028.

McConkie said that for all of UFRG’s confidence that they would easily qualify for the ballot, changing the removal law in the middle of the process seems desperate.

“It’s a football game, they’re up by a touchdown, but it’s just the 3rd quarter,” she said. “It’s still very much within reach.”

Note to readers, March 19, 11 a.m. • This story has been updated to include Thursday’s latest tallies.