Garbett appeals to 10th Circuit in her effort to get on Utah’s primary ballot

Jan Garbett

GOP candidate for governor failed to meet lowered voter signature threshold

SALT LAKE CITY — GOP gubernatorial candidate Jan Garbett announced Friday she has filed an appeal to the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in her legal battle to get on the June primary ballot, after failing to meet the lowered voter signature threshold set by U.S. District Judge Robert Shelby.

“We are appealing because Judge Shelby’s remedy didn’t fix the unconstitutional burden he identified in Utah’s signature laws during coronavirus,” Garbett said, describing the judge’s ruling reducing the number of verified signatures needed from 28,000 to 19,040 as “already one of the most difficult standards in the country.”

She said other courts dealing with the issue have lowered voter signature thresholds by at least half and in some cases, even more, because of the COVID-19 pandemic that ended door-to-door canvassing by political campaigns.

Her campaign said concerns raised by other candidates in the race, including a separate lawsuit filed by Jeff Burningham, prove her lawsuit “is not merely about furthering her campaign, but about ensuring the right to ballot access for all candidates, current and future, against the entrenched interests of Utah’s political establishment.”

Four Republican candidates for governor are on the primary ballot, Lt. Gov. Spencer Cox, former Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr., former Utah GOP Chairman Thomas Wright and former Utah House Speaker Greg Hughes. Cox, Huntsman and Wright all gathered voter signatures.

Cox and Hughes were advanced by party delegates at the April 25 virtual state GOP convention, where Burningham and Salt Lake County Councilwoman Aimee Winder Newton, who both had stopped gathering signatures, saw their gubernatorial bids end. Garbett chose not to compete for delegate support.

Huntsman, who has said he had to collect some 60,000 signatures in order to end up with enough verified by the lieutenant governor’s office, tweeted Thursday that both Burningham and Winder Newton should be on the ballot, citing “a crazy system of signatures (that should have been reformed long ago).”

Winder Newton said Thursday she is not pursuing legal action and that she believed the process was fair.

Garbett sued the state after the nearly 21,000 signatures she collected fell short and were rejected in mid-April. Shelby ordered the state to accept her signatures and lowered the number required to be verified by 32%, reflecting the point in the process when restrictions were put in place to stop the spread of the new coronavirus.

But the lieutenant governor’s office notified the court after reviewing a few thousands names that it was “mathematically impossible” for her to reach the reduced threshold. Garbett then asked the court to further lower the threshold or just put her on the ballot, requests that were denied by Shelby.

from Deseret News https://ift.tt/3bWR1JE