Rep. Burgess Owens (Wikipedia)
Utah Republicans announced that they have collected enough signatures to qualify an initiative for the November ballot to ask voters whether to repeal the state’s independent redistricting committee and return redistricting decisions to state legislators.
Utah Republican National Committee member Brad Bonham posted a video on X of the group dropping off boxes, stacks, and bins of signatures at a county clerk’s office in Salt Lake County on the deadline day of Feb. 15.
Party Chairman Rob Axson said in the video that the group was committed to giving a voice back to the people of the state.
“We get to decide come November,” he said.
More than 200,000 signatures were submitted, which was significantly more than the 140,000 threshold needed. The group is optimistic after an internal review and validation of the signatures, according to Axson.
“We’re confident that we have exceeded the requirements,” he told The Epoch Times.
Axson said they expect the state to take about two weeks to certify the signatures.
Axson also chairs Utahns for Representative Government, the organization behind the initiatives. The organization filed the initiative to repeal the state’s Proposition 4, passed in 2018, which formed an independent redistricting commission.
Utah is represented by four Republican U.S. House members and two Republican senators.
The new congressional map, adopted in October 2025 after a judge ruled a previous map was unconstitutional, created three Republican districts and one Democratic district by keeping Salt Lake City almost entirely in one district instead of splitting it into four pieces.
Rep. Burgess Owens (R-Utah), a former professional football player who was first elected in 2020, is considered the most likely to lose his seat with the newly redrawn map.
Vice President JD Vance encouraged Utah voters to sign the petition on the eve of the deadline on Feb. 14.
“We’re in the final stretch to put the repeal of Prop. 4 on the ballot in Utah! I hope more Utahns will join President [Donald] Trump and Senator Mike Lee in this very important effort to keep Utah red,” Vance posted on X, sharing a January post by Trump in favor of the effort.
Republicans say Utah’s maps should be drawn by those who are elected by the voters, not by those who they say are activist judges or members of unelected commissions. The state’s constitution gives the Legislature the authority to draw congressional boundaries, according to the group.
Utah’s redistricting power struggle mirrors a dispute in California, where voters in November 2025 passed Proposition 50 to take the map-drawing power away from an independent panel and give it to lawmakers. The difference is that in California, Democrats used the process to gain seats in Congress, while the initiative in Utah favors Republicans.
Utahns for Representative Government stated that the power should reside with the people.
“We will not stand by as unelected judges and activist interests attempt to rewrite our Constitution,” the group stated on its website. “This is about defending freedom, fairness, and the rule of law.”
Utah’s Democratic Party stated that the repeal effort felt like an admission that “fair maps are dangerous to those in power.”
“When leaders draw the lines to guarantee victory, that’s not a republic. It’s rule by design—power secured before a single vote is cast,” the state’s Democratic Party posted on Facebook on Feb. 15.
The Democratic Party also reposted a searchable list of all the people who have signed the petition, suggesting that their names could be removed by contacting county officials.
The original post, by Brave Utahns Rapid Response Network, a grassroots group fighting the effort to repeal Prop. 4, asks the public to “see if any of your friends or family members are on record as signers.”
“If you find them and think they may have signed by mistake, we can help you get the correct form to send to your county clerk to get the signature removed,” the group stated.
The group is holding several in-person events to solicit people interested in removing names from the petitions.
An attorney presents an argument for Utah in a case challenging the state’s congressional districts before the Utah Supreme Court in Salt Lake City on July 11, 2023. Leah Hogsten/The Salt Lake Tribune via AP, Pool, File
Utah’s congressional map is also facing a court challenge. The federal court has agreed to hear a lawsuit on Feb. 18 that two of the state’s U.S. representatives have filed, hoping to block the state’s court-ordered congressional map from being used in November.
The lawsuit, filed on Feb. 2 by Republican Rep. Celeste Maloy and Owens against Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson, also a Republican, asks a three-judge panel to void the state’s court-appointed map.
The lawsuit argues that the map was created by a state district judge and the lieutenant governor with no authority under federal or state law.
The map was proposed by Mormon Women for Ethical Government, the League of Women Voters of Utah, and individual Utah voters, who were represented by Campaign Legal Center, funded primarily by progressive philanthropist MacKenzie Scott.
The groups filed a motion to intervene in the federal lawsuit.
