Erin Ruzek and her sister had stopped for groceries near Kimball Junction outside of Park City last month when they were approached by two men gathering signatures for a ballot initiative intended to repeal Utah’s independent redistricting commission and a law banning partisan gerrymandering.
Ruzek said she told them no thanks. She supports 3rd District Judge Dianna Gibson’s decision to discard the Legislature’s map and instead impose one that created a Democratic-leaning district in Salt Lake County.
“No. This is to show your support for Judge Gibson,” Ruzek said the man told her.
“This is why you want to sign it,” she recalled him saying, “because they are trying to go back and say the map she approved is illegitimate, so by you signing it’s showing your support for Judge Gibson.”
That isn’t true.
Still, Ruzek and her sister were swayed and both of them signed the petition.
When she later realized what she had done, Ruzek felt deceived, and now both women plan to ask their county clerk to remove their names.
The issue stems from the state Republican Party’s efforts to get enough signatures to let Utahns decide whether to repeal the 2018 voter-passed Better Boundaries initiative, which established an independent redistricting commission and barred drawing political boundaries that unfairly advantaged one party over another.
To get there, the party needs signatures from nearly 141,000 Utah voters across the state. But Ruzek and others allege that at least some of the people deployed to collect the signatures are using misleading sales pitches and deceptive tactics.
To read Robert Gehrke's full report visit sltrib.com.
This article is published through the Utah News Collaborative, a partnership of news organizations in Utah that aims to inform readers across the state.