Riley Beesley, vice chairman of the Utah Federation of College Republicans, center, and Kelsey Newberry, a Utah field representative for Turning Point Action, right, talk to Trent Wilkerson, left, at his door during a Turning Point Action signature gathering event to repeal Proposition 4 at Union Park in Midvale on Thursday, Feb. 12, 2026. Wilkerson signed the petition.
Riley Beesley, vice chairman of the Utah Federation of College Republicans, center, and Kelsey Newberry, a Utah field representative for Turning Point Action, right, talk to Trent Wilkerson, left, at his door during a Turning Point Action signature gathering event to repeal Proposition 4 at Union Park in Midvale on Thursday, Feb. 12, 2026. Wilkerson signed the petition. | Tess Crowley, Deseret News
Utahns for Representative Government, the committee organized by Utah GOP chair Rob Axson, has until 5 p.m. on Sunday to submit enough petition packets to qualify for the November ballot.
This comes after the Utah Supreme Court on Friday denied a request to postpone the signature submission deadline for the Republican effort to repeal Utah’s Proposition 4 redistricting law.
As the clock ticks down, GOP volunteers and paid signature gatherers worked to persuade Utahns to give Prop 4 a second look even as Better Boundaries — the group behind the law — asked Utah voters to remove their signatures from petitions.
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A person signs a petition to repeal Proposition 4 at a Turning Point Action signature gathering event at Union Park in Midvale on Thursday, Feb. 12, 2026. | Tess Crowley, Deseret News
Over the past three months, the GOP’s bid to fight one ballot initiative with another has boiled over into a bitter brawl about who should draw Utah’s congressional maps and how citizen-initiated legislation should be implemented.
One thing both sides agree on is that the attempt has also demonstrated just how ugly direct democracy can get.
The campaign has been plagued by aggression against signature gatherers, claims of misleading tactics and high-profile interventions from MAGA superstars, bringing a new level of national attention to Beehive State redistricting.
This month, Turning Point Action — the turnout operation founded by conservative organizer Charlie Kirk, who was killed in Utah last September — sent its get-out-the-vote infrastructure to Utah for the first time.
At a cold “Super Chase” event on Thursday, Turning Point’s inaugural representative for Utah said the initiative represents both a backlash against judges choosing congressional boundaries and a battle over congressional control.