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One of the most talked about political fights in Utah right now is the effort to repeal Proposition 4.

Now remember, that's the redistricting law that Utah voters approved back in 2018 through

a ballot initiative known as Better Boundaries.

The process established these standards for how congressional and legislative districts

are drawn and it created an independent

commission to recommend the maps. But Republican lawmakers didn't like Prop 4. They saw map

drawing is their job, so they took it to court. But after a series of rulings, the legislature

lost. They had to go along with maps drawn under Prop 4, which

included a district where Democrats have a real shot at winning, which brings us to where we are

now. State Republican leaders are collecting signatures to put a new initiative on the ballot

that would repeal Proposition 4 and return full control of map drawing to the legislature.

Now, there's a tight deadline here, and Republicans aren't just relying on volunteers.

They have hired a Wyoming-based firm called Patriot Grassroots to manage much of the signature gathering operation. But in recent weeks,

there have been claims that some signature gatherers have provided misleading or incomplete information

to voters about just what it was they were signing. And election officials have also flagged

dozens of packets with potentially fraudulent signatures for investigation.

The Salt Lake Tribune's Robert Gerke recently got an unusually up-close look at just how complex and fractured this process has become.

So for the last three years, this redistricting thing has been taking up a disordinent amount of my time.

You know, eat, sleep, breathe, redistricting.

So I was home from work one night, get a group text in my family thread, and it's my daughter.

And she's giving my son a hard time for having signed the repeal petition.

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