The effort to repeal Proposition 4 in Utah is heating up and, in some instances, getting ugly.

Two groups are dueling over a key ballot measure that will decide the future of how Utah’s future political boundaries are set every 10 years. The repeal effort comes amid the state’s ongoing redistricting legal battle, which recently resulted in a court-ordered map that created one Democratic district and three Republican districts, to the dismay of Utah’s Republican-controlled Legislature.

The political issues committee Utahns for Representative Government, founded by Utah Republican Party Chair Rob Axson, is less than two weeks away from its Feb. 15 deadline to gather enough signatures to put the repeal of Proposition 4 on the November ballot.

As of Wednesday morning, 70,401 signatures have been verified for the repeal effort, according to the latest tallies recorded to the lieutenant governor’s website. In order for the question to qualify for the ballot, Utahns for Representative Government will have to submit at least 70,347 more — while meeting specific thresholds in at least 26 of Utah’s 29 Senate districts.

Meanwhile, Better Boundaries — the anti-gerrymandering group that successfully sought the Proposition 4 ballot initiative in 2018 to create an independent redistricting commission and neutral map-drawing standards — is fighting back.

On Wednesday, Better Boundaries announced a “targeted” campaign to urge signers to remove their signatures from the repeal petition in response to reports of misleading signature gathering tactics.

The group has sent out thousands of mailers to voters who have signed the repeal petition informing them about “what they signed and instructions on how to remove their signatures if they choose to do so,” the Better Boundaries announcement said.

“We at Better Boundaries believe voters deserve transparency and honesty in the democratic process,” Elizabeth Rasmussen, executive director of Better Boundaries, said in a statement. “When Utahns passed Proposition 4 in 2018, they were clear about what they wanted. Utahns should know exactly what they’re signing, and if a repeal effort can’t win on the facts, it shouldn’t try to win through misleading petition practices.”

Better Boundaries’ announcement cited reports by KSL.com and The Salt Lake Tribune, in which multiple voters who signed on to the repeal effort said they felt “tricked” by signature gatherers’ characterization of the ballot initiative.

Better Boundaries said it has also received “numerous direct reports from Utah residents via email and social media expressing concern that they were not fully informed about the petitions they signed.”

Utah GOP chair says ‘bad actors’ have been fired

In response, Axson criticized Better Boundaries, accusing the group of implying “there is a willful intention” from Utahns for Representative Government to engage in deceptive tactics.

“Now has there been a time or an instance here or there where somebody misspoke or maybe somebody was not meeting the expectations we have for them? Absolutely,” Axson said. “But when it’s happened, we’ve addressed it.”

He said a “handful” of signature gatherers have been fired either for being “tongue tied or were not willing to be as clear as we expect.”

Axson argued those instances don’t represent the efforts of the vast majority of more than 1,500 volunteers and roughly 750 paid signature gatherers. He said there have been a “handful of examples where somebody fell short, either unintentionally or intentionally, neither one’s OK.”

“But we’re still talking about a small handful of examples when the vast majority of Utahns and signature gatherers, whether paid or volunteer, are doing it the right way,” Axson said. “And that’s the expectation that we have and always work toward.”

Rasmussen told Utah News Dispatch on Wednesday that she wanted to “make it very clear that I don’t believe” that misleading tactics are “willful or directed by the sponsors” of the repeal effort.

“I really do believe that they believe Prop 4 is a threat — we completely disagree on that,” Rasmussen said. “That being said, the group they decided to work with (for signature gathering) is pretty well known for not really doing it in the best way.”

Utahns for Representative Government has spent more than $4.3 million in donations it’s received from a dark money group that helped finance Trump’s presidential campaign in 2024 — the nonprofit Securing American Greatness — on its signature gathering recruiting company, Patriot Grassroots, according to the group’s financial disclosure reports.

Rasmussen pointed to reports from Missouri that Patriot Grassroots is tied to a paid signature gathering opposition effort where petition volunteers have reported intimidation or harassment.

Reports of assaults

Axson also said Proposition 4 repeal efforts signature gatherers have run into “disgusting, gross, and absolutely inexcusable” behavior. The Deseret News reported last week about multiple police reports from signature gatherers that alleged acts of aggression from people stealing or ripping up their signature packets.

“There’s no place for violence. There’s no place for intimidation,” Axson said, adding that he heard of more reports from signature gatherers in recent days who said their packets were stolen. “It’s never OK to have intimidation and violence and scare tactics and this nonsense, regardless of what side of the issue you’re on.”

Axson said there’s been “double-digit” numbers of assaults and thefts and “scores of instances of intimidation.” He said there have been instances of people “pulling Utahns away from signature gatherers, physically putting hands on citizens who are wanting to sign this, yelling in their face, using the most repulsive vulgarities.”

Rasmussen condemned that behavior, too. She noted Better Boundaries is not “protesting the signature gatherers,” but rather focusing on educating people on how to remove their signatures if they’ve signed. Physical violence or intimidation tactics “is not an effective way to change minds or change policy,” she said.

“I know it’s a really heated time right now, but that’s not how you accomplish things,” she said. “It only raises the temperature and pushes further in their corners. And so we do not endorse anything like that. We’re all about the policy conversations.”

Fraudulent signatures

Earlier this week, FOX 13 reported that Utah County Clerk Aaron Davidson’s office found more than 500 fraudulent signatures submitted as part of the repeal effort. Axson said “we flagged those for him” after the repeal effort leaders became aware of concerning behavior from two signature gatherers.

“They were immediately fired, and we flagged that we believed that those signatures were likely fraudulent,” Axson said. “We flagged it for the clerk and asked him to look specifically at (packets submitted) by those people… and we encouraged him to do the investigation and prosecute those people. They were only employed for a very small window of time and they were immediately fired.”

Axson emphasized that Utahns for Representative Government has fired only a “handful of folks” out of about 750 paid signature gatherers, plus more than 1,500 volunteers.

“And people want to make hay about a small handful,” he said. “And that’s fine, they have every right to do that. … But let’s not lose sight of thousands of people engaged in defending representative government, and suddenly make the story about a couple of bad actors.”

Rasmussen said Better Boundaries “took a lot of care” in 2018 when the group gathered signatures for Proposition 4, and “of course there’s always going to be a margin of error, but we never had that many” fraudulent signatures.

“If it happens a couple of times, yeah, but this is way more than that, and that’s a problem,” she said.

It remains to be seen whether the Proposition 4 repeal will qualify for the November ballot. The daily tallies reported on the lieutenant governor’s website have indicated that progress, at least in numbers of signatures so far validated by county clerks, have been slow going.

But Axson said those numbers lag weeks behind on-the-ground signature gathering — assuring “we’re very comfortable” with the effort’s progress, “but we’re going to go and keep gathering every signature possible.”

“It’s going well, but it will take all Utahns,” he said.

He declined to say how many signatures the repeal effort has gathered so far that have not been reflected in the verified tallied, saying there’s “no advantage” to sharing that information while there’s an active opposition campaign to the repeal effort.

“If they want to play the games that they’re going to play, that’s their choice, but I don’t need to provide them with a game plan on how to do that,” he said.

Utah News Dispatch is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.