On January 26, the Utah Democratic Party asked a U.S. District Court for permission to intervene in the lawsuit Utah Republican Party v Herbert, 2:16cv-38. The Republican Party lawsuit, filed on January 15, 2016, argues that the number of signatures for a candidate to get on a primary ballot is unconstitutional, at least as applied to the Republican Party, because only registered Republicans can sign primary petitions and there just aren’t enough registered Republicans to sign. In some legislative districts, over 50% of the registered Republicans would need to sign.
The Democratic Party argues that this is the Republican Party’s own fault, caused by the party’s winning an earlier case that said the party has a right to confine signatures on primary petitions to members of the party. The Democratic Party also says the current Republican case should be dismissed on the grounds that the Republican Party should have raised that point in its first election law case, the one filed in 2014. Finally the Democratic Party says it wouldn’t be fair to lower the number of signatures on primary petitions for just the Republican Party.