You may recall me writing about SB 275 a month ago. In summary, the bill allows petition signers to remove their name from a petition up to one month after it has been submitted.  At the time I pointed out this law could easily be used by opponents of any particular petition to put pressure and harass targeted individuals in an attempt to make the petition fail.

Sure enough, we are now hearing of examples of such harassment. But first, a little back story.

Less than a week ago the Deseret News reported that State Republican Party chairman Dave Hansen will “probably” start a campaign to convince some GOP signees to remove their name from the Utahens for Ethical Government petition but that they “won’t harass anyone; (they’ll) ask them to consider taking their name off.”

Indeed, the next day, a federal judge (presumably seeing how such a law could be abused) issued a court order to keep the names of signers off the public record for at least ten days. This, however, does not appear to be enough.

While listening to the Nightside Project on KSL, a caller stated that they were being harassed by an individual to remove their name from the UEG petition. Now I am not accusing the Utah Republican Party of initiating the process of harassment, but who is to say if an individual member, perhaps one who works for the county clerk, acted on their own accord to harass this signer?

Of course this is all pure conjecture, but the Utah GOP certainly has the most vocal in their opposition to the peoples initiative (though some Democratic lawmakers have raised concerns as well). They are the ones who work in the majority of the clerks offices, and they are the ones who passed this law in the first place.

I am not opposed to allowing people to remove their signature, but this is proof that lawmakers are not interested in letting the process work properly. What I predicted would go wrong has, and it did not even take a week to prove it.