The Republican-led push to repeal Prop. 4, Utah’s voter-approved anti-gerrymandering law, is clinging to the ballot by a few dozen signatures. On Wednesday, an audit threw 168 previously removed names back onto the rolls because the requests came in after the 45-day window, giving supporters a short reprieve from a signature-removal effort that threatens to keep the measure off November’s ballot.
Prop. 4, approved by voters in 2018, created guardrails against partisan map-rigging. Utahns for Representative Government (UFRG), the Republican-led group that wants the law off the books, initially cleared two hurdles to put the issue before voters: collect signatures from 8% of voters statewide and at least 8% in 26 of Utah’s 29 Senate districts.
Signers have 45 days to yank their names off petitions. Opponents have been targeting districts where a wave of removals could knock the initiative below the 8% threshold and keep the repeal off the ballot.
The shakiest district is SD15, covering parts of Cottonwood Heights, Midvale and West Jordan in Salt Lake County. New totals from the lieutenant governor’s office Wednesday show 43 more removals there, trimming the surplus to just 68 signatures.
It would be worse, but 44 names were restored after the Salt Lake County Clerk found their removal requests landed outside the 45-day window.
Salt Lake County Clerk Lannie Chapman said her office’s review turned up 168 late removal requests, including the 44 in SD15. Other districts with names restored: SD3, SD9, SD10, SD11, SD13, SD14, SD16, SD17, SD18, SD19 and SD22. Three of those—SD9, SD13 and SD14—had already fallen short of the 8% mark.
Without those 44, SD15’s cushion would sit at just 24 signatures.
That reprieve may not last. Another 69 removals in SD15 would sink the district below the line. As of Wednesday, 3,170 SD15 signers are still within the 45-day window, a pool nearly 50 times larger than the surplus.
SD8 has also taken a beating this week. 109 signatures were removed on Wednesday after losing 124 the day before. Its cushion now stands at 398 signatures, with more than 3,900 names still eligible to be removed.
In SD15, April 18 is the last day the removal math still works. By then, only 69 signers remain eligible—exactly matching Wednesday’s surplus—assuming no removals before that date. In SD8, the deadline is April 17, when the pool of eligible removals drops from 402 to 90.
Three districts, SD27, SD28 and SD29, no longer have enough eligible signers left to drop them below the threshold.
