With few exceptions, the signatures three candidates for statewide office submitted to get on the ballot in Utah were legitimate, according to a newly released legislative audit, but in at least one instance packets with a large number of invalid signatures sounded enough alarm bells that auditors shared the signatures with the attorney general’s office.
The packets were flagged for “having many non-matching signatures,” according to the audit. The legislative auditors did not reveal what the attorney general’s office did with the packets and a spokesperson for the office did not return a message Tuesday.
The audit also did not say which of the three campaigns reviewed — Gov. Spencer Cox’s reelection bid, Rep. John Curtis’ U.S. Senate campaign or Derek Brown’s attorney general effort — had submitted signature packets in question.
A spokesperson for the attorney general’s office would not comment on the matter.
“As with all complaints or referrals to the A.G.’s office, we do not confirm or deny whether we have an open investigation,” said spokesperson Alex Curcio.
Overall, the audit found that the vast majority of signatures submitted by the candidates were valid and properly screened, although there were isolated instances where the Davis County Clerk’s office — hired to verify the packets — found some signatures that were approved or rejected in error.
Among Brown’s signatures, for example, 1.3% of the signatures that were approved should have been rejected. Put another way, 98.7% of Brown’s signatures were properly verified. The error rate on Curtis’ submission was 1.7%, while Cox’s was 2.4%.
In addition, Curtis had 0.9% of his signatures incorrectly invalidated, while Cox had 1.9% and Brown had 6.4%.
The results of the legislative audit are similar to a similar review released last month by State Auditor John Dougall, who found the error rate for Cox’s signatures was just over 1%.
The validity of the signature-gathering process has been under fire by Rep. Phil Lyman, who lost the Republican primary to Cox and is running a write-in campaign. Lyman has repeatedly called Cox an illegitimate candidate and accused the governor of fraudulent signature-gathering.
“The signatures that ‘qualified’ [Cox] for the Primary ballot have never been verified by an unbiased, third party,” Lyman posted on social media Tuesday. Dougall’s audit, he said, “was not a forensic audit and it was the foxes auditing the henhouse, we want an audit of the foxes.”
While legislative auditors acknowledged that, had the improperly validated signatures been excluded, the candidates could have potentially been short of the 28,000-signature threshold to qualify for the ballot.
But, auditors said, there were additional signatures submitted that were not counted once the clerk’s office determined the candidates had met the threshold. Additionally, candidates still had more time to gather signatures had they come up short. In Cox’s case, he had 28 more days left to collect signatures before the deadline.
During a legislative committee hearing Tuesday afternoon, Davis County Clerk Brian McKenzie praised his staff’s hard work and high rate of accuracy.
“My staff reviewed over 300,000 signatures in a matter of just a couple months,” McKenzie said. “We knew it wasn’t perfect.”
But, he noted, the audit didn’t find evidence of ineligible voters, made-up names, or individuals who weren’t registered Republicans slipping through the cracks.
House Minority Leader Angela Romero, D-Salt Lake City, said those findings should help to dispel misinformation about undocumented voters and illegitimate candidates being spread by some campaigns — a comment that appeared targeted at Lyman.
“There are people within our body who are making really horrific comments about people in this body, people who are elected and people who live in this state,” she said. “So I wanted to make sure that was clarified.”
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In a joint statement Tuesday, House Speaker Mike Schultz, R-Hooper, and Senate President Stuart Adams, R-Layton, said the audit confirmed that all of the candidates “fulfilled the requirements to qualify to be on the ballot.”
“Although the audit identified some errors in the signature verification process, these would not have affected the primary election’s outcome,” the Republican leaders said. “Each candidate submitted more signatures than required by law and would have had sufficient time to gather additional signatures if needed.”
The auditors, however, also recommended a series of changes to improve the process, which Schultz and Adams said would be addressed in the upcoming legislative session.
Those suggestions include changing administrative rules to count additional submitted signatures after the threshold is met, having clearer guidance for when signatures should or should not count, increasing the transparency of the signature verification process, and formalizing a chain of custody for the signature packets.
