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SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — The FBI and a Utah prosecutor are trying to figure out who used a legislative computer to allegedly forge the signature of a state Supreme Court justice on an initiative petition.
The signature was one of thousands of electronic signatures gathered in 2010 by a nonpartisan group seeking to strengthen legislative ethics laws.
Electronic signatures, which require signers to fill out an online form, are no longer allowed in Utah elections.
But in 2010, the matter was headed to the state Supreme Court, and the group Utahns for Ethical Government was pushing its ethics initiative, which Republican leaders in the state opposed.
As those issues were coming to a head, someone signed the petition as Justice Christine Durham.
Durham says it wasn't her, and now three years later, investigators are trying to figure out who did it.
Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill said he began investigating the matter last year and has asked the FBI and Salt Lake City Police to assist in the probe.
FBI spokeswoman Deborah Bertram said she could not confirm or deny an investigation.
Durham, through a court spokeswoman, declined to comment.
The investigation was revealed after court documents related to Durham's signature were unsealed on May 29, and reported by columnist for The Salt Lake Tribune days later.
The documents had been sealed under a federal injunction barring the disclosure of any name on the initiative petitions.
The initiative from Utahns for Ethical Government, nonpartisan public-interest group, would have created an independent ethics commission for legislators and other officials and imposed the state's first campaign donation limits for legislators.
They tried to put the issue before voters in 2010 and 2012, but were held up both times after elections officials determined they didn't gather enough qualifying signatures.
While the group was still gathering signatures in 2010, the Republican-controlled Legislature undercut the effort by passing a law to make it easier for residents to remove their names from such petitions.
Lawmakers also passed their own ethics bills, including a measure later approved by voters that created a watered-down version of the ethics commission.
Utahns for Ethical Government ultimately sued the state when the group was unable to get their initiative on a ballot.
The case was appealed to the Utah Supreme Court in 2012.
On July 20, the attorney general's office filed a motion requesting Durham recuse herself from the case because her name was on the petition, along with her home address and birthdate.
Durham filed an affidavit stating she didn't sign the petition, and as a rule, doesn't participate in such initiatives.
David Irvine, an attorney for Utahns for Ethical Government, said the group's IT consultant pulled data records for the Durham signature posted on March 4, 2010, and traced it to an IP address at the state Capitol.
Capitol technology staff told Irvine the computer that generated the IP address was registered to the Utah House of Representatives.
"And I said to myself at that moment, 'If there is a god, this will be a legislator's computer,'" said Irvine, himself a former Republican legislator.
But Irvine wasn't able to find out who might have been using the computer two years earlier.
Last summer, when Irvine requested data about who had access to the computer, the machine was sitting in storage and the records detailing who might have used it had not been retained, said House chief deputy Joe Pyrah.
"That just astounds me," Irvine said. "I just keep thinking it's pretty unlikely that we have no record of this."
Pryah said legislative computers are used by multiple people, and when they're transferred from person to person over the years, their systems are wiped.
"All we know that is for all time that was requested, there was no information on that computer that would suggest who had it," he said.
Gill, who began investigating the signature late last year, wouldn't comment on whether that data could be retrieved.
"I wouldn't be looking at it if we didn't have leads and issues to pursue," he said.
Irvine said he doesn't know why Durham's name may have been added to the petition.
"We have a couple of theories about that, but that's all they are," he said.
It's possible someone may have added Durham's name to embarrass her because they don't support her viewpoints, or to try to force her to recuse herself from the case because she was seen as a proponent of electronic signatures, he said.
Irvine said legislators in both parties had been "hotly opposed" to the petition, but said conservatives particularly were "not enamored" of Durham's views.
Durham is the only justice on the five-member court that was appointed by a Democratic governor.
Messages left with House Speaker Becky Lockhart and David Clark, a former Republican legislator who was serving as the House Speaker in 2010, were not immediately returned.
Salt Lake City Rep. Jennifer Seelig, the leading Democrat in the House said she hopes investigators are able to determine who submitted the signature.
"It's disturbing if anyone can forge any signature on a petition and not have accountability for that," she said. "If we can't make sure that the stamp or the signature or however we want to mark it is authentic, then we've got a problem."
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