The Dark Side of Utah’s Signature Gathering Industry
Where Million-Dollar Political Campaigns Meet Workers Sleeping in Their Cars and How Utah’s Initiative System Demonstrates Who Democracy Really Belongs To
If you’ve been to a Smith’s lately, you’ve probably had the conversation. You’re forgetting your reusable bags in your car, trying to remember whether you already have cream cheese at home, and a very friendly person with a clipboard steps into your path.
“Help keep Utah red.” “Stop liberal judges.” “Protect your vote.”
The script changes depending on who you are and what they think you’ll respond to, but the pitch is the same: Sign here to repeal Proposition 4.
On the surface, it feels like civic engagement. Democracy in the wild. Utah neighbors talking to Utah neighbors. Except… almost none of that is true.
The person holding that clipboard might have slept in their car last night. They might be from Florida. They might vote for Democrats. They might not even know what Prop 4 is. They just know they need 50 signatures today, or they don’t eat tomorrow. One worker posted on Reddit: “A lot of us were sleeping in our cars. Some went days without showers. People wore diapers because taking a normal bathroom break meant losing pay. Many of us literally couldn’t afford food.”
When we spoke with the worker behind that post, they described strict quotas, chaotic management, and people getting fired the second they asked basic questions about pay or breaks. They described it as “reckless.” Nothing was organized, nobody knew what was happening day to day, and the threat of not getting paid hung over everything.
It’s a glimpse of how this industry really works — not as civic engagement, but as a gig economy built squarely on the backs of people who can least afford the instability. And of course it is. That’s the story of almost everything in this country: the wealthy get what they want, and the workers carrying the load get squeezed, discarded, or blamed.
And that’s the topic of today’s piece. The issue isn’t whether Utahns should have the power to run ballot initiatives. They should, and they do. The issue is that our system forces those initiatives through a signature industry that only survives by exploiting the people doing the work.
Unlike many politicians want you to believe, Utah doesn’t have a ballot initiative problem. Utah has a signature-industry problem — one that preys on desperate workers and turns our citizen process into something anyone with enough money can weaponize.
