Utah’s 2022 midterm elections: Around 169,000 votes left to be counted in Salt Lake County

Click here for live results as counts are released

With a handful of Salt Lake County races yet to be definitively decided, the County Clerk Sherrie Swensen said Wednesday that her office has roughly 169,000 ballots yet to be counted and reported, plus a number of provisional ballots that also need to be processed.

So far, the county has reported about 208,000 votes, meaning 45% of the ballots cast in Utah’s most populous county are outstanding. She planned to report an official number to the state elections office Wednesday evening.

The remaining ballots aren’t enough to change the outcome of the U.S. Senate race between Mike Lee and Evan McMullin, but there are several other races where they could make a difference.

In the Salt Lake County Council race between Democrat Suzanne Harrison and Republican Richard Snelgrove, Harrison currently leads by 14,370 votes, meaning Snelgrove would need to win about 58% of the remaining votes to take the lead — a tall order, but mathematically possible.

Further down the ticket, Democrats will be hoping the upcoming reports can salvage two state House races. Incumbent state Rep. Elizabeth Weight is about 250 votes behind her Republican challenger Quinn Kotter and state Rep. Clare Collard is 166 votes behind Republican Anthony Loubet. It’s not clear how many of the 169,000 votes fall into those respective House districts.

McMullin concedes; Lee vows oversight of ‘out-of-control’ Biden administration

Independent Senate candidate Evan McMullin said Tuesday night that he had called Republican Sen. Mike Lee and conceded that Lee had won reelection.

“We’ve come together in a historic way and this effort — our effort — has shown the country there is another way forward, a constructive way forward,” he told supporters in a somber tone.

McMullin said he had run an independent campaign, focused on bringing together and committed to democracy and the founding ideals of the nation.

“We knew that Utahns wanted politics of hope, leaders that unite, not divide,” McMullin said.

As of 11 p.m., McMullin trailed Lee by 13 percentage points, just ender 85,000 votes.

Lee had declared victory about a half hour before McMullin spoke.

It was the culmination of the most expensive race in Utah history and an unprecedented bid in a statewide race.

If McMullin’s percentage holds, it would be the best U.S. Senate showing by a non-Republican since 1976, when Sen. Frank Moss lost to Orrin Hatch.

Lee declares victory, vows to take on ‘out-of-control’ Biden admin

Sen. Mike Lee took to the podium just after 10:30 Tuesday to declare victory over independent challenger Evan McMullin, promising to reform spending and conduct aggressive oversight of “this out-of-control” Biden administration, as Republicans retook control of the House and may take control of the Senate.

“We were right all along, weren’t we?” Lee said.

The Associated Press had not called the race for Lee, but FOX News did declare him the winner a few minutes earlier. Lee was leading McMullin by about 12 percentage points — about 75,000 votes.

“We’re going to make tomorrow a better place,” Lee told supporters. “I love Utah. It’s home to me but it’s much more than that. It’s a place of refuge. It’s a place of sanity.

It was Utah’s most expensive U.S. Senate race in history, with the candidates spending millions, and outside super PACs pouring in millions more.

Amendment to give Lege more power appears headed for defeat

Voters have come out by a large margin in initial vote tallies against a proposed constitutional amendment that would give the Utah Legislature more power to revise budgets during special sessions without consulting with the governor.

In 2018, voters approved a constitutional amendment that allowed the Legislature — rather than the governor — to call itself into special session in case of emergency. But the amendment limited how much they could revise the budget to 1% of the total budget. Lawmakers argued that didn’t give them enough latitude and wanted to increase it to 5% — meaning they could spend or cut more than a billion dollars.

Voters disagreed. As of 10:30 p.m., 62% of voters opposed handing over more control. The amendment did not get much attention, and neither proponents nor opponents bothered to write an argument for the measure in the state voter information pamphlet.

All four Utah GOP congressmen post decisive victories

Utah’s four Republican congressmen breezed to victory Tuesday night, trouncing their Democratic challengers.

The Associated Press called the race for Rep. Blake Moore over Democrat Rick Davis at about 9:30 p.m. Rep. Burgess Owens took an overwhelming lead over Darlene McDonald; Rep. John Curtis beat Glenn Wright; and Rep. Chris Stewart beat Democrat Nick Mitchell.

As results came in from Salt Lake County and Utah County, independent challenger Evan McMullin cut into Sen. Mike Lee’s lead. McMullin trailed Lee by more than 65,000 votes — a margin of about 11 percentage points.

Lee takes early lead as first results trickle in; Rep. Blake Moore wins

Independent challenger Evan McMullin cut into incumbent Sen. Mike Lee’s lead Tuesday night, getting a big boost from the first batch of results from Salt Lake County.

Lee had jumped out to an early lead, with results coming in mainly from Davis, Washington and a handful of rural counties. But McMullin had a sizable 59%-37% edge in the first report coming out of Salt Lake County, cutting Lee’s overall lead nearly in half. Lee still led by more than 65,000 votes.

Meantime, The Associated Press declared incumbent Republican Rep. Blake Moore the winner over Democrat Rick Jones. Utah’s other three GOP congressmen also held sizable leads in early returns.

In the early Salt Lake County results, incumbent Republican Richard Snelgrove was trailing challenger, state Rep. Suzanne Harrison, 56% to 44%. Democratic District Attorney Sim Gill was well in front of challenger Danielle Ahn, and clerk candidate Lannie Chapman was beating Republican Goud Maragani. However, those numbers only reflect about 30% of the votes.

Ballot processing underway in Salt Lake County

Ballots are processed ahead of the first release of election results at Salt Lake County Government Center on Tuesday night. County Clerk Sherrie Swensen is overseeing her final election night after more than 30 years as clerk.

Utah Lt. Gov. says results are waiting on Cache County

And then there was one.

Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson tweeted just before 8:30 that there is one county where voters are in line waiting to cast ballots. That county, according to her office, is Cache County. Once the final voter gets through the line, county clerks will get the green light from the state to release election results.

She had said earlier in the evening that she was expecting that results could be released sometime between 8:30 and 8:45 p.m., even as Utah County Clerk Josh Daniels reported that lines in that county were growing just before polls were about to close.

Utah County voters are seeing lines at ballots, though Daniels said Tuesday that lines are moving quickly. He told The Salt Lake Tribune wait times haven’t exceeded 25 minutes, and waits are longest in Provo and American Fork.

Write-in votes in Davis Co. shouldn’t mean significant delays, clerk says

Write-in campaigns are a little outside the norm, but counting the write-in votes shouldn’t create significant delays.

Davis County Clerk Curtis Koch said Tuesday that his office had been processing write-in votes in the Utah House race between Republicans Trevor Lee and the incumbent GOP Rep. Steve Handy as they’ve been coming in for the last three weeks.

That means that, after polls close statewide, there should be at least early results in that race.

Lee beat Handy at the Davis County GOP convention and, because Handy did not gather signatures to get on the ballot, it looked like his legislative career might be over. But after repeated controversial statements that Lee had made on social media came to light, Handy opted to launch a write-in bid to keep his old seat.

Earlier this week, Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson posted a summary of the state law when it comes to write-ins: The name has to be written on the correct spot, but close enough is close enough when it comes to spelling. If the intent of the voter is clear, the vote counts.

Koch said more voters than expected have been casting ballots in person, but the flow has generally been steady, except this evening when printers on couple voting machines malfunctioned and lines grew to about 25 minutes.

Koch said he wished more voters would have used the mail-in option, but a drumbeat about mail-in fraud seems to have taken a toll.

“I think people have heard enough of it that it’s started to wear on them, Koch said. “The best thing we can do as clerks is open our doors” and let them see how the process works.

Iron and Carbon counties voting going smoothly after early mail-in ballot issues

After mail-in ballot delivery issues led county officials to expand early and in-person voting in Carbon and Iron counties, election officials say Election Day voting has been smooth sailing.

Carbon and Iron counties are seeing a 50.8% and 42.7% voting turnout, according to voting tallies from the Utah lieutenant governor’s office released around 6 p.m.

The voting turnout is heartening, both of the counties’ clerks told The Salt Lake Tribune.

Both counties were left scrambling in recent weeks after a mishap with their ballot distribution led to voters receiving their mail-in ballots late — or not at all.

Iron County Clerk Jon Whittaker said Tuesday evening the county received over 5,000 early votes, and had over 10,000 total votes as of 4:30 p.m.

“There’s been a lot of positive developments here,” Whittaker said. Around 7 p.m., Iron County saw a voter turnout rate of roughly 44%.

Seth Marsing, the Carbon County clerk, said the county’s expansion of early voting and addition of voting centers, “seemed to work,” he said Tuesday evening.

Marsing said mail-in ballots have trickled in, but the county’s overall turnout rate has been trending upward. He added that the county’s voting turnout was around 60% as of Tuesday evening, adding he expected turnout to be around 60-65%.

Fraud concerns driving high in-person voting in Utah County, election official says

In Utah County, elections officials are seeing higher-than-expected in-person voting Tuesday.

County Clerk Josh Daniels said they were anticipating about 8% of the voters will cast ballots in person this year — about double the percentage they see in a normal election.

Daniels said the spike in day-of voting appears to be because of the number of voters wary of mail-in voting and the potential for fraud — although there is no evidence mail-in is susceptible to fraud.

On Monday, Utah Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson directed clerks not to release any results while voters anywhere in the state were still in line. But Daniels said, despite the influx of in-person voting in Utah County, lines have been manageable and he doesn’t anticipate his county will significantly delay results.

As of 5:30 p.m. on Monday, 47.5% of registered voters had cast ballots in Utah County.

Weber County opens additional voting center in downtown Ogden

Weber County elections officials have opened a third voting center after Google directed voters to the Weber Center in Ogden on Tuesday.

The Weber Center — at 2380 Washington Blvd. in Ogden — is now open for voting, according to Ricky Hatch, the Weber County clerk.

Republicans a large percentage of Utah’s early voters

Over the last couple of weeks we’ve been keeping an eye on the breakdown of ballots that have been processed already and here’s what we know: As of Tuesday morning, there had been 630,091 ballots that have been processed, roughly 37% of all registered voters in Utah.

By Tuesday afternoon the figure had climbed to 41%. For perspective, the turnout in the 2018 midterms was 75%, but it’s important to remember that three ballot initiatives spiked turnout that year. In the 2014 midterms, it was 46%.

Keep in mind this current turnout figure does not include what are probably several hundred thousand ballots that have been received and are waiting to be processed, those that are in transit, or votes that will be cast by folks showing up at their polling place today.

At the moment, 44% of registered Republicans have had their ballot processed, compared to 37.5% of Democrats and 27% of unaffiliated voters, which could signal that Republicans are more enthusiastic than Democrats this time around.

It is true that some number of Democrats — we can’t say for sure how many — changed their registration to vote in the Republican primaries, but the trends in voter registrations don’t lead me to believe it is enough to change the percentages in a major way.

Also, note that the unaffiliated turnout number is really, really low.

So to this point, registered Republicans are accounting for 62% of the ballots cast, Democrats 14% and unaffiliated 20.5%.

In terms of raw registration, 52% of the state is registered Republican, 15% Democrat and 27% is unaffiliated, so we can see that thus far unaffiliated voters are staying home and Republicans make up a larger portion of these early votes.

Again, this is not a predictor of who those individuals voted for, but the electorate thus far.

This could all change, of course, if a flood of ballots rolls in and flips the script. Salt Lake County, for example, has lower turnout right now than most of the rest of the state, with just over 200,000 ballots processed out of 591,999 registered voters as of Tuesday morning. Utah County is also under 40%, while rural counties like Grand, Garfield, and Piute are pushing 70%, and Wayne County is at 72%.

So this early indicator seems to favor Republicans, but there are a lot of unknowns. We’ll need to wait for the returns tonight and, in those close races, the week or two to come.

Online mix-up causes confusion in Weber County

In a tweet, Weber County Clerk Ricky Hatch said Google was apparently showing that voters could cast their ballots at the Weber Center in downtown Ogden, which is where the clerk’s office is located.

“This is incorrect,” Hatch said in the tweet. “In-person voting is at the county fairgrounds exhibit hall and the Ogden Valley Library.” The county fairgrounds are located around five miles to the northwest of downtown, while the Ogden Valley Library is located in Huntsville.

According to the county’s website, the Weber Center was the county’s only center for early voting, which was likely the cause of Google’s mix-up.

In a text message to The Salt Lake Tribune, Hatch said, “Because 98% of Weber County voters vote by mail, we only need one vote center.” He added that the county has only used one voting center since 2019, but this year they added a second voting location in the Ogden Valley.

Weber County’s voter turnout was around 40% Monday night, according to Hatch. He said turnout is lower than in 2020, though he said that’s normal, considering presidential elections typically have higher turnout. However, he added that this year’s Election Day will likely have a lower turnout than in 2018, a year that featured Constitutional amendments and ballot initiatives like Medicaid expansion and redistricting.

“So that was a really busy election, that turnout was about 82%, I believe, in 2018. I don’t think we’re gonna hit that this time,” he said Tuesday morning.

It’s not too late for Utahns to register to vote

It’s Election Day!

If you have been putting off registering to vote and now want to cast a ballot in the 2022 midterm elections, it’s not too late.

Utahns who currently are not on their local voter rolls can still register at voting locations on Tuesday. New voters will need to present one primary form of identification (like a driver’s license or passport) or two forms of ID that show their name and current residence (like a bank statement or vehicle registration).

No early results until all Utahns have a chance to vote

Early election results might not come in as fast as years past, the lieutenant governor’s office has cautioned.

On Monday, the state’s top elections official issued new guidance to county clerks, directing the local election officials to not post early election results before every Utahn has had a chance to vote. The guidance comes after mail-in ballots in two counties were delayed because of a distribution issue at an out-of-state sorting facility.

“While I’m hopeful early election results will go live shortly after polls close at 8 p.m. on Tuesday, this guidance may impact the release timeline for results in Utah,” Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson said in the news release on Monday. “Eligible voters deserve the opportunity to cast their ballots without outside influence, including data from preliminary results.”

Who should I vote for?

The Salt Lake Tribune has created voter guides to help Utahns get to know the candidates on their ballot this fall.

The guides include information about Utah’s U.S. Senate and House races, contests in the Utah Legislature, state school board races and several Salt Lake County races.

Check out the voter guides, in English and Spanish, at: 2022 Midterm Elections.