The group aiming to keep the Count My Vote citizen’s initiative from reaching the November ballot are bombarding Utahns who signed the petition with a possibly misleading robocall that suggests their signature may have been forged.
The call, which is drawing complaints from Utahns, says that signature gatherers for Count My Vote are facing criminal charges for forging signatures. The robocall then infers that the recipient “might be surprised to find out” their signature appears on the CMV initiative.
“Not only were hundreds of signatures forged, but hundreds of citizens were deceived into signing the Count My Vote petition,” the call continues before urging the listener to take action to remove their name from the initiative.
While it is true that employees for a signature-gathering company were criminally charged for forging names on petitions, those cases were discovered in December and January, and the employees were terminated by the company shortly afterward.
The Count My Vote initiative crossed the threshold for ballot inclusion on Thursday morning, reaching the 10% of signatures from the last presidential election in 26 of 29 state Senate districts. Keep My Voice organizers have until May 15 to get enough people to remove their names from the initiative to block it from the ballot. Utah elections officials will certify which initiatives will officially be on the November ballot on June 1.
Dave Bateman, head of Entrata and founder of Keep My Voice, is spending big on the effort to stop Count My Vote from making the ballot. The real estate technology company has donated more than a quarter-million dollars to Keep My Voice this election cycle.
Representatives from Keep My Voice did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Listen to the robocall below:
