Utah Lt. Gov.-elect Deidre Henderson, who will be in charge of Utah’s elections when she takes office in January, is troubled by the accusations of election fraud coming from President Donald Trump and other Republicans.
“I don’t think there was widespread voter fraud, there’s no evidence of that,” said Henderson on The Tribune’s “Utah Politics” podcast. “If there’s evidence of that, let’s absolutely prosecute them, but there’s no evidence.”
Trump and his allies have alleged, without proof, that widespread voter fraud is the only reason that Democrat Joe Biden won the 2020 election. Trump’s legal team has filed more than 50 lawsuits seeking to overturn the election. The vast majority of those suits have been swiftly thrown out as being without merit.
When asked if Biden won the 2020 election, Henderson quickly replied, “Yes. Of course, he did.”
Henderson echoed Gov.-elect Spencer Cox who also said there was zero evidence that voter fraud affected the outcome of the 2020 vote.
Many states altered their election procedures in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic, shifting to vote-by-mail, a system Utah has used for years with great success. Henderson says Utah’s universal vote-by-mail system is much more secure than the expanded absentee balloting employed by some other states.
“Universal vote-by-mail is much more secure because you have to clean up your voting lists. You have to make sure the people on those lists are alive and living where they live and that signatures match. I do wish people would stop saying vote-by-mail is a bad thing,” she said.
In Utah, every registered voter receives a mail ballot instead of, as in some states, receiving one only upon request.
Efforts by Trump and others to sow public suspicion in the election are causing real damage to the country’s political fabric, Henderson said.
“If we don’t have confidence in our elections and the outcomes of our elections, then we’re in trouble,” she said. “I’m very concerned about these efforts to undermine election results.”
Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes drew the ire of Gov. Gary Herbert and Gov.-elect Spencer Cox on Wednesday when he endorsed a long-shot lawsuit from Texas to overturn the results of the 2020 election, attempting to throw out mail-in votes in four states that went for Biden.
Democratic Rep. Ben McAdams also joined the podcast to discuss his loss to Republican Burgess Owens and what’s next for him after he leaves Congress in January.
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