March 26 (UPI) — A petition effort to put a repeal of Utah’s anti-gerrymandering law approved by voters eight years ago on the November ballot failed to meet state requirements, an updated tally indicated Thursday.
The Utah state Republican Party has spent months gathering signatures to put Proposition 4 to a vote this fall, and while organizers had enough signatures to qualify, they did not get enough of them from enough parts of the state.
In order to place an amendment on Utah’s ballot, at least 8% of registered voters in the entire state must sign the petition and 8% of registered voters in at least 26 of the state’s 29 Senate districts must sign the petition.
The group pushing for the new amendment, Utahns for Representative Government, initially surpassed the required 141,000 signatures statewide — they’d collected 162,974 — and met the 8% in 26 districts requirement, but an effort to remove signatures deemed inadmissable in Utah’s District 15 nixed the effort, KUTV-TV in Salt Lake City reported.
“We have significant concerns about the practices utilized by the opposition and continue to review the signature validation and removal process,” Rob Axson, chair of the Utah Republican Party, said in a statement to KTVX-TV in Salt Lake City.
“Whether now or in the future, by litigation or initiative, we will Repeal Prop 4,” he said. “This fight is not over but just beginning.”
The 2018 law that was passed by Utah voters created an independent redistricting commission and banned partisan gerrymandering.
For the past year, Republican-controlled state legislatures have looked to redraw congressional districts to make it easier for GOP candidates to win seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and retain control of the chamber in this year’s election.
Generally, congressional districts are redrawn by states once a decade, using data from the latest census.
Utah’s legislature last year approved redrawn districts alleged to favor Republicans, but they were later invalidated by a federal court for violating Prop 4 — leading to the effort to repeal the voter-approved law.
Over the past several months, the groups Better Boundaries and Brave Utahns Rapid Response Network have challenged signatures and the methods used to collect them, successfully dropping the petition effort below the numbers it needed to make the ballot.
“A well-informed voting population leads to better outcomes for everyone,” said Elizabeth Rasmussen, executive director of Better Boundaries. “A majority of Utah voters approved Prop 4 in 2018, and we look forward to the day when Utah voters can finally pick their politicians, not the other way around.”
