BS Summary: This article contains 12 faulty reasoning types, including Hasty Generalization, Availability Heuristic, and Anecdotal, with Negativity Bias as the most egregious example at 30.6% saturation with 71 hits. Analysis detected 435 faulty-reasoning hits from 233 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 66.9% and a BS Rank of 74% (4,426 of 16,813 articles). This article is worse (more manipulative) than 73.70% of the article peer group.
Eight years ago, Utah voters approved Proposition 4, a ballot initiative that, after a long legal battle, resulted in newly drawn congressional boundaries.
Now, a group backed by the Utah Republican Party is trying to get a new initiative on the ballot, one that would eliminate Prop 4, and it has raised a lot of controversy.
Reports have streamed into media outlets and political groups for months detailing the deceptive language and questionable practices used by some signature gatherers working to gain the necessary support for the initiative to repeal Prop 4.
There have also been accounts of citizens violently berating signature gatherers, even assaulting them.
Despite the challenges, Rob Axson, the chairman of the Utah Republican Party, says he’s confident the initiative will make it onto the ballot this year.
Salt Lake Tribune politics reporter Robert Gehrke isn’t holding his breath.
And Democratic political consultant Jackie Morgan says, whatever happens, this whole process reveals the shady nature of the signature gathering industry.
All three join us to talk about the ongoing effort to repeal Prop 4.
Robert Gehrke is a politics and government reporter for the Salt Lake Tribune.
Rob Axson is the chairman of the Utah Republican Party and founder of Utahns for Representative Government, a political issues committee organizing the campaign to repeal Prop 4.
Jackie Morgan is a senior partner of Elevate Strategies, a Democratic political consulting firm.
Analysis
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