- A Utah legislative committee paused a bill to decentralize candidate signature verification.
- Rep. Lisa Shepherd proposed shifting verification responsibility to individual counties.
- The bill was unanimously held by the committee while potential changes are discussed.
SALT LAKE CITY — A legislative committee voted Monday not to advance a bill that would have decentralized responsibility for verifying signatures to qualify candidates for the primary ballot in state elections.
The Lieutenant Governor's Office currently contracts with the Davis County clerk to verify the signatures for candidates in statewide races, but Rep. Lisa Shepherd, R-Provo, introduced legislation that would make each county clerk responsible for verifying the signatures from their counties.
"The issue is, we have over 300,000 signatures in 2024 that were verified by one county," she told the House Government Operations Committee Monday. "This bill ... is not a referendum on any person doing the job currently. So, I just want to make sure it's not about people, it's not about personalities, not party, not politics — it's just structure."
Shepherd added that HB25 "spreads the burden" of verifying signatures across the different counties and insulates signature verification from a clerk who may have a conflict of interest.
Weber County Clerk/Auditor Ricky Hatch spoke to lawmakers on behalf of the Clerk's Legislative Committee, which was opposed to the original version of the bill, but had not yet taken a position on a substitute version introduced Monday. Hatch said the bill placed new verification responsibilities on clerks but didn't provide funding to carry them out.
He added that the decentralized process would likely result in inefficiencies. Signature verification stops once a candidate reaches the threshold to qualify for the ballot, so Hatch said the change would slow things down.
"We could be verifying numbers or signatures for candidates who have already met the threshold, but since we would be doing it in our own county, we would have no idea if the threshold had been met," he said.
Hatch also suggested the bill could decrease transparency into the process, because a statewide candidate could have to travel to 29 counties to observe the verification process.
Several lawmakers hinted that they still had concerns with Shepherd's bill, even with the substitute, and the committee ultimately voted unanimously to hold the bill while changes are discussed.
"A couple little snags happened at the last minute ... so I'd be favorable to that if we can put it on another agenda," Shepherd said.
