Only a few weeks ago, a ballot initiative to restore the Legislature’s ability to gerrymander Utah’s political districts appeared to be a lock for the 2026 ballot.
It didn’t last.
As of Thursday, the Republican-led initiative slipped below the number of signatures required for the measure to go to voters, as thousands of voters statewide and hundreds in one key Senate district withdrew their support.
According to the latest update from the lieutenant governor’s office, 327 more voters removed their support from the repeal effort in the critical Senate District 15.
The removals mean Republican-backed Utahns For Representative Government failed — by 259 signatures — to meet the required threshold in 26 of the state’s 29 Senate districts and it will not qualify for the November ballot.
UFRG worked for months and spent millions of dollars to collect the signatures to try to repeal Proposition 4 — the 2018 voter-passed initiative that created an independent redistricting commission and banned partisan gerrymandering.
Leaders for the group said they’d submitted packets containing “well over” 200,000 signatures and comfortably surpassed the statewide signature requirement of just under 141,000 — representing 8% of the registered voters in the state.
Read Robert Gehrke's full story at 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.