A man stood outside the Salt Palace Convention Center in Salt Lake City Thursday. He held a large banner that read “Stop gerrymandering. Repeal Prop 4 in Utah. Sign the petition now.”
He was one of thousands of signature gatherers across Utah asking passersby to sign in favor of repealing Proposition 4, a 2018 voter-approved initiative that created an independent redistricting commission and established standards for drawing congressional maps.
Lawmakers later modified Prop 4 while retaining control over redistricting. Then, in 2021, when the Legislature adopted congressional maps that differed from the independent commission’s recommendations, advocacy groups sued. A judge later ordered the map redrawn using Prop 4 standards — a ruling Republican leaders called judicial overreach.
That legal fight helped trigger efforts to repeal Prop 4. But contrary to the words on the signature gatherer’s banner, Prop 4 was implemented to limit partisan gerrymandering.
Sarah McConkie, one of the leaders of the Brave Utahns Rapid Response Network, or BURRN, said this type of misleading messaging isn't unusual. You may have seen members of her organization standing near signature gatherers holding signs that read “Decline to Sign.”
BURRN is a grassroots volunteer organization that stations members near petition circulators who, McConkie said, are misinformed at best.
”They don't even know the definition of gerrymandering," she said, "or know the history of how long this has been going on in the different court decisions, which — it is a long and convoluted journey that is difficult to follow.”
While McConkie said her organization’s main goal is to keep the initiative to repeal Prop 4 off the ballot, its secondary goal is to educate members of the public who are being petitioned to sign.
“A lot of the signature gatherers don't present things accurately or clearly," she said, "and sometimes — a lot of the time — it's just that people are being vague and misleading. But sometimes it's outright lies.”
Her organization also works to document these cases in hopes of getting some of the signatures thrown out. She shared one video with UPR of an encounter that took place in December outside the DMV in Draper.
In the video, a signature gatherer tells the person taking the video that the petition has to do with "the independent redistricting commission."
"We're trying to get this back on the ballot to ask voters to repeal it or keep it — either way," the petition circulator says.
When asked why anyone would want to repeal it, she answers, "It's just an option. We're allowing the citizens to vote one way or the other."
The person taking the video then explains that he remembers voting on this issue already and asks why it should go back on the ballot.
"The citizens are leading an initiative to repeal it or keep it," the petition circulator responds.
"Which citizens?" he asks.
"The Utahns for Representative Government,” she says, referring to the group organizing the repeal petition, which is backed by the Utah Republican Party.
Along with the misleading banner in Salt Lake, encounters like this one are why BURRN members have begun recording and collecting videos — because, McConkie said, many people don’t actually know what they’re signing.
“There are very strict laws for citizen initiatives that you have to follow when you collect these signatures or they're not valid," she explained. "And we know from our own experience doing this, they're not following them …. we hear a lot of people just say, 'Oh, they're lying to people,' but that doesn't mean much unless you can prove it.”
In an interview with the Salt Lake Tribune, Utah Republican Party Chair Rob Axson said that, with thousands of signature gatherers, a few were bound to “misspeak,” but that any confusion was not intentional.
Still, state law requires petition circulators to accurately represent what a petition does. And Utah code prohibits knowingly misrepresenting the contents or purpose of a petition to persuade someone to sign it — or not sign it.
Meanwhile, county clerks across the state have reported receiving more than 2,300 requests from people asking for their signatures to be removed from the petition.
Axson said the unusually large withdrawal request was the result of coordinated efforts in opposition to the initiative, not misleading messaging. Besides, he emphasized, the petition is merely for placing the repeal on the ballot. Voters will still have the option to vote for or against it, just as they did in 2018.
But to Bennett Hacket, a mechanical engineering student at Utah State University and BURRN volunteer, this conflict is about more than just Prop 4.
"We just need to work more on holding the Legislature accountable," he said. "I personally feel that — especially in the last couple of years — they have been not listening to the people who elected them, and they've been doing whatever they want."
And this isn't a partisan issue. Hacket said he's worked alongside BURRN volunteers of many different political affiliations, all with the same goal of preserving Prop 4.
"I think that everyone having a fair vote is important," he said, "just making sure that everybody is represented, no matter what party they might vote for, what ideas they might have — I think that's still a good thing."
For the repeal initiative to qualify for the ballot, the Utah Republican party must collect roughly 144,000 valid signatures, including support from at least 8% of voters in 26 of Utah’s 29 Senate districts. The signatures had to be submitted by Sunday, Feb. 15 to qualify for the November 2026 ballot. Organizers say they submitted more than enough signatures to qualify, but many of the signatures are still being verified by county clerks.
