ELECTIONS, POLITICS, & GOVERNMENT
On the Hill 2025: Ballot signature amendments
Jan 6, 2025, 8:00 PM
The Utah State Capitol is pictured in Salt Lake City on Thursday, Jan. 2, 2025. (Laura Seitz/Deseret News)
(Laura Seitz/Deseret News)
SALT LAKE CITY — On Tuesday, Jan. 21, Utah lawmakers will convene the annual general session of the Utah Legislature. By law, they will have 45 days to create new laws and adjust existing laws. They will wrap up the general session on Friday, March 7.
In the weeks before the session, and throughout it, KSL NewsRadio’s Inside Sources will invite lawmakers onto the air to discuss the business being conducted in the name of Utahns.
Related: Utah Legislature approves candidate signature gathering change
We will provide a summary of the topic, partial transcripts of the interviews, and links to the podcasts.
Ballot signature amendments
Rep. Ray Ward, R-Bountiful, is working on legislation that he said would decrease the threshold of signatures needed if someone takes the signature route to get on the Utah primary ballot. He spoke with Inside Sources hosts Erin Rider and Taylor Morgan.
What follows is a transcript that has been edited for clarity and brevity.
HOST TAYLOR MORGAN: Rep. Ward, thank you for joining us. What can you tell us about your bill titled Ballot Signature Amendments?
REP. RAY WARD: In all 50 states you can get on the ballot with signatures or with just filing, right? Some states don’t require any signatures. If you want to run, you just file to run. Other states do require signatures, and Utah allows for signatures. So we are similar to all 50 states in that respect.
But if you look at how many signatures we require in Utah, it’s much different than other states. The signature thresholds that we have here in Utah to run for office are 10 times as high as the averages in other states. The bill is pretty simple. It just lowers our signature thresholds to put them in line with what most other states are like, which is about a 90% reduction.
HOST ERIN RIDER: How does this affect the caucus convention system?
WARD: The bill doesn’t speak to anything different at caucus convention … a person who … wants to get on the ballot by virtue of going to convention and getting a vote, winning a vote there, they still can.
The cost of signature-gathering in Utah
MORGAN: You said this bill could reduce signature requirements by as much as 90%. What is the threshold, have you come up with a flat percentage across all districts?
WARD: [Right now,] for a House seat in Utah, you have to get 1,000 signatures. Currently, if you were to try and pay someone to do that, that would cost you about $10,000. The average in other states for that is $80, but in my bill, I set it at 100.
For the governor right now, you have to get 28,000 [signatures] in Utah. That’s a quarter of a million dollars or more … if you’re paying people to do it, which really functionally, you would have to pay people to do it. An individual and their friends can’t get 28,000 [signatures]. This [bill] would reduce it to 1,000. That’s still a whole lot of work, but it just puts it more in line with what other states are.
The entire interview can be found at the podcast below.
