At the political institute of Utah’s flagship university, the state’s top elections official stood in front of a gaggle of students and government officials, resolutely recounting recent threats to her office — one in the form of a suspicious package containing white powder and signed from the “United States Traitor Elimination Army.”
“This letter was sent with the malicious intent to harm not me or my staff, but you, the voters,” Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson said during a speech at the University of Utah on Thursday morning. The address was met with a standing ovation. Such threats, she said, have become so common they are “almost unremarkable.”
As lieutenant governor, under Utah law, she is responsible for overseeing the state’s elections. Since being sworn in — two days before insurrectionists seeking to undermine election results stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 — Henderson’s office has seen numerous threats, some publicly made under her social media posts.
Those threats, she said, are something she never experienced while serving as a state senator.
In a survey of local election officials released earlier this year by the Brennan Center for Justice, 38% reported experiencing threats, harassment or abuse.
Amid the hostile behavior, many have left their posts. Since 2020, more than half of Utah’s county clerks — the officials charged with administering elections — have opted to step away from their role.
Henderson has an image of the first woman to legally vote in the U.S., a Utahn, hanging next to the door of her office. She spoke of the constitutional convention that came after that ballot was cast, and how Congress later passed a law disenfranchising women in Utah, where delegates voted for women’s suffrage to become an enumerated right.
Going beyond criticizing to attack institutions that administer elections, Henderson said, runs the risk of endangering those rights.
“Over the past few years our election system has been overwhelmed by demands and disruption from individuals who are best described as election vigilantes, who claim to value the constitution and rule of law while violating both,” she said. “Until recently, it has been easy to dismiss these efforts as fringe, but I have grave concerns that the volume and intensity of their destructive efforts are seeping into the center. If mob rule becomes valued more than the rule of law, we risk losing everything.”
Henderson’s speech came less than 48 hours after the Republican candidate for vice president, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, refused to answer in a nationally televised debate whether his running mate, former President Donald Trump, lost the 2020 election.
In an interview with The Salt Lake Tribune last month, Henderson said she would not be endorsing a presidential ticket this election cycle.
“I have a real struggle with people who do know better and should know better at the top of Republican politics, who are sowing doubt and chaos and confusion for political gain — no matter who it is,” Henderson told The Tribune.
Those remarks came a couple of months after Gov. Spencer Cox, who she is running alongside for reelection, surprised longtime supporters with an endorsement of Trump. Cox was previously among the prominent Republicans who derided the ex-president.
“Despite what pundits and politicians on both sides are claiming, no matter who wins in November, this will not be our last election,” Henderson told the crowded room. “The next one is just around the corner. This is how we do things in the United States of America.”
At the podium, Henderson quoted from one of President Abraham Lincoln’s earliest orations — the Lyceum Address — delivered decades before he was elected commander in chief. The address focused on a rise in mob violence, especially by advocates of slavery, threatening the still-young nation’s rule of law.
“According to Lincoln, even ‘the best citizens’ are susceptible to the mobocratic spirit because eventually they either give in to it or become intimidated into silence,” she said. “This undermines government institutions, leaving them weak and susceptible to corruption.”
(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson speaks during news conference on election misinformation at the University of Utah, on Thursday, Oct. 3, 2024.
While the assault on election integrity is a national phenomenon, in response to a question from a student, Henderson said Utah is as vulnerable to having political figures who “glom on to that narrative” as anywhere else. Her own campaign with Cox became the target of baseless election fraud allegations earlier this year after beating the party-backed candidate in the Republican primary contest.
One of the features of Utah’s electoral system that has come most under attack is its practice of sending ballots in the mail to every registered, active voter. While several states in the American West use that system, Utah is the only majority-Republican state to adopt it.
An investigation by The Tribune found that among 26 of Utah’s 29 counties — the ones that made data available on voting methods — 96.7% of Utahns who cast a vote in the June primary election either voted by mail or left their ballots in drop boxes.
“I think [that system] is a strength, especially these days,” Henderson told students, pointing to when elementary schools doubled as polling places. “That’s not safe anymore ... so it’s really good for us as a state that we have this very decentralized vote, primarily vote-by-mail system, because it mitigates some of those risks that are inherent in having specific polling locations, especially if you’re worried about disruption or election interference on Election Day.”
Henderson asked Utahns to play a part in protecting democracy — doubt the doubters, commit to accept election results and take steps to make sure their ballot is submitted on time.
“Please, please extend some grace to your friends and neighbors in Utah who run our elections,” Henderson implored of Utahns. “They want nothing more than to ensure that your vote counts accurately — and it will.”
