The Republican-backed group trying to repeal Utah’s ban on partisan gerrymandering is suing Better Boundaries, alleging the group violated campaign laws by covering the cost of a 73-cent stamp in an attempt to convince voters to mail in their forms withdrawing support for the repeal effort.
The lawsuit filed Monday by Utahns for Representative Government accuses Better Boundaries of a “coordinated scheme to nullify a citizen initiative through an industrialized signature removal campaign” through a series of mailers, canvassers knocking on doors and an online removal campaign.
Earlier this month, Better Boundaries began sending letters to every voter who signed the petition seeking to repeal Proposition 4 with pre-filled forms and a stamped envelope that can be returned to county clerks to withdraw the voters’ signatures.
The suit alleges that paying that 73 cents for postage is a “quid pro quo” incentivizing voters to remove their signatures and a violation of state law, which makes it illegal to “pay any individual to remove the individual’s signature from an initiative petition.”
It is a class A misdemeanor to pay a voter to remove a signature.
“Without judicial intervention, the coordinated use of prepaid, pre-filled removal forms threatens to nullify UFRG’s and the People of Utah’s constitutionally guaranteed initiative power,” the UFRG lawyers argue.
They are asking the court to order county clerks to set aside all of the Better Boundaries signature withdrawal forms the clerks receive until the court decides if the mailers broke the law.
The lawyers for Utahns for Representative Government also accuse Better Boundaries of paying for its signature removal campaign through a political issues committee — the similarly named Utahns for Responsive Government — that was dissolved in 2019.
Better Boundaries counters that Utahns for Responsive Government is a non-profit organization that has provided some in-kind contributions to the signature removal efforts of Utahns Protecting our Constitution and those donations are reflected on the financial reports.
Better Boundaries executive director Elizabeth Rasmussen said it’s not surprising that thousands of Utahns have asked to have their signatures removed “given the many reports of misleading signature gathering tactics and fraud.”
As of Tuesday, around 3,400 Utah voters have removed their signature from the repeal effort.
Utahns For Representative Government is trying to get an initiative on the November ballot to repeal Proposition 4 — a 2018 voter-passed initiative that created an independent redistricting commission, set neutral redistricting criteria and banned manipulating boundaries to give one party an advantage over the other.
To qualify for the ballot, UFRG needs to secure 140,748 valid signatures statewide — which is 8% of registered voters — plus meet the same 8% threshold in 26 of the state’s 29 senate districts.
As of Tuesday, county clerks had validated 129,946 signatures and UFRG had qualified in nine senate districts, according to the latest tally from the lieutenant governor’s office.
Leaders of the repeal effort, though, said that as of the Feb. 15 deadline they had submitted “well over” 200,000 signatures and expect they will qualify for the ballot.
If they narrowly qualify in a few Senate districts, the knock-off campaign by Better Boundaries and other groups becomes critical.
In 2018, for example, the Count My Vote initiative originally qualified in 26 counties, but failed to make the ballot after opponents succeeded in getting enough voters to remove their signatures, pushing it under the threshold.
The Legislature previously tried to gut Proposition 4 and its ban on gerrymandering, but the Utah Supreme Court ruled that undoing a voter initiative essentially nullifies the citizens’ constitutional right to make law through a ballot initiative.
UFRG is aiming to use the initiative process to wipe out Proposition 4. If successful, it would not impact the congressional maps in 2026, but could let the Legislature redraw the 2028 boundaries as it sees fit.