Utah County Clerk explains why H.B. 267 referendum signature verification is ‘taking extra time’

SALT LAKE CITY (ABC4) — Recently, the office of Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson shared updated numbers for the signature verification process for the H.B. 267 referendum. A county clerk responded to that post to explain why fewer signatures had been verified in Utah County compared to others.

As of 9 a.m. on April 30, the official numbers were being reported as 183,908 valid signatures gathered. As of noon on April 29, 45,878 signatures had been rejected. The election office also shared the estimated percentages of signatures left to verify in each county.

According to the numbers from Tuesday, Davis County had to verify roughly 20% of its gathered signatures, Salt Lake County had 25% remaining, Weber County had 50%, and Utah County had 83% left.

That means Utah County had only verified 17% of the gathered signatures as of April 29, with about a week until the May 7 statutory deadline. On April 30, Utah County Clerk Aaron Davidson posted a response under the election office’s post to explain the “two reasons why Utah County was behind the other counties.”

Davidson’s post explained that Utah County was “doing a second pass on every signature packet,” and that it was reportedly “the only county” doing so. He said that the second pass was done to make sure the rejected signatures were actually invalid.

“That was taking extra time,” Davidson’s statement reads. “All the other counties were only doing a single pass on their packets.”

The second reason he cited was the fact that H.B. 27 “required every county to renumber their precinct designations and submit them to the state.” Davidson said some precincts had to be manually updated in Utah County, which reportedly caused some delays.

“Utah County is now just doing a single pass, and the precinct designation problems have been fixed,” Davidson said.

His statement continued on to say that roughly 67% of signatures still had to be verified after making the change to a single pass, and the county’s rejection rate was 14% while the statewide average was 21%.

“We have no concerns about completing the signature verification by the May 7th statutory deadline,” Davidson’s response reads.

Background

H.B. 267 — called “Public Sector Labor Union Amendments” — passed the Utah Senate on February 6 and was signed by Gov. Spencer Cox on February 14. Referendum efforts were launched in March 2025.

In order to qualify for the ballot, the referendum efforts need to collect 140,748 signatures, representing 8% of registered voters in 15 of Utah’s 29 Senate Districts.

Earlier this week, the Protect Utah Coalition, which has been leading the referendum push, said groups had met key requirements in making progress to get the referendum on the 2026 ballot: Of more than 320,000 signatures gathered, more than 140,000 had been verified. Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson has until June 23 to certify those efforts.

Those who support H.B. 267 recently told ABC4.com that they will be focusing on informing voters about the bill, rather than trying to keep the referendum off the ballot.

Lindsay Aerts and Derick Fox contributed to this report.