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Petitioners challenge clerk’s validation of referendum signatures; clerk defends process and cites state law
Summary
Petition sponsors said 6,600 submitted signatures were not counted and questioned the use of a new electronic-submission deadline; Clerk/Auditor Amelia Powers said the office followed state verification rules, offered to share rejection reasons, and urged legislative fixes for onerous statutory timing requirements.
Petition sponsors at a Utah County Commission meeting pressed the clerk/auditor’s office over why thousands of signatures for a referendum were not validated, and whether a 2019 state law on electronic submission was applied correctly. Speakers asked the commission to remedy what they called an unfair process; the clerk’s office explained the verification steps and invited petitioners to review rejected signatures.
Catherine Heinmarsh and other petition backers said the referendum team submitted roughly 23,000 signatures and that about 6,600 were not counted. They questioned why long-time voters appeared excluded and whether the office had applied a new electronic-submission rule that petitioners argued could not have been met for signatures gathered on the final allowable day.
Amelia Powers, Utah County clerk/auditor, described steps the office has taken since 2019 to improve voter-roll maintenance, including weekly updates from death certificates and multiple signature-matching sources (voter file, DMV records, and prior election records). She said the state law requiring electronic submission of images took effect May 14, 2019, and that county staff followed the state’s established verification approach for referendums. Powers said the office tracked and documented reasons for every rejected signature and invited petitioners to review records with experienced staff.
Powers said that even if every disputed signature had been validated, the petition still would have fallen short of the threshold to reach the ballot, and she declined to spend an estimated additional $10,000 of taxpayer funds to recanvass signatures that would not have changed the outcome. Petition representatives disputed aspects of the legal interpretation and said they would be unlikely to pursue costly court action, though they urged the county to adopt a corrective posture or press for legislative change.
County officials said petition sponsors retain the right to seek judicial review and reiterated the office’s willingness to provide the rejected-signature data and to work with the legislature to address the statutory electronic-submission timing that petitioners described as impractical.
The commission did not take action on the petitioners’ requests at the meeting; the clerk’s office offered to provide detailed rejection statistics and to meet with petition representatives to review specific signatures.
