Phil Lyman pushed for his Utah House colleagues this week to convene an emergency session of the Legislature to disqualify Gov. Spencer Cox from the ballot for, the lawmaker says, failing to get enough signatures to qualify for the Republican primary — a suggestion that was swatted down by House Speaker Mike Schultz.
About 200 supporters of Lyman’s write-in campaign staged a rally on the rainy Capitol steps Thursday, where speakers accused Cox of being an “illegitimate” candidate, alleged there were “secret combinations” supporting him, and called for the governor to either be disqualified or drop out of the race.
One speaker tore off his T-shirt and began to scrawl on it with a marker while reciting, “In memory of our God, our religion, and freedom, and our peace, our wives, and our children” — a reference to a verse in the Book of Mormon, the foundational text of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, in which Captain Moroni turned his coat into the “title of liberty” banner. The crowd erupted.
Following the rally, Lyman confirmed that he raised the issue during a closed caucus with his Republican House colleagues Wednesday, but wouldn’t discuss what was said because the meetings are secret. But also said he had another conversation with Schultz Thursday morning.
“I just told the Speaker, I said, if I were imagining what would happen here it would be calling a special session to call for the disqualification of Spencer Cox,” Lyman said. “And the response was, ‘Well, we can’t. We have no ability over any of that.’”
‘Well, you do, you have the ability to speak.’” Lyman said he told Shultz.
“I have a lot of respect for Mike Schultz. I want his success. I don’t want him denigrated or, you know, derided. But I also want to stand up for the truth, and I think I know what the truth is, and he may not see it the same way.”
In a statement Thursday evening, Shultz said, “There are things Phil and I agree on and things Phil and I disagree on. Phil asked for us to call ourselves into special sessions, but I believe there are clear concerns about separation of powers and that the Legislature cannot and should not call itself into special sessions to disqualify someone from the ballot.”
“We both agree that we have work to do to clarify and improve our election processes and procedures,” the speaker added. “The Legislature plans to address many of these concerns in the upcoming legislative session, and we will continue to look for areas of improvement to ensure our elections remain fair and secure.”
(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) Phil Lyman, listens to proceedings during a court hearing in West Jordan, in an effort to obtain Spencer Cox's signatures, on Thursday, July 18, 2024.
The efforts by the Lyman campaign to have Cox removed from the ballot ramped up this week after a legislative audit released Tuesday found that a small percentage of the 28,000 signatures Cox — and two other statewide candidates, U.S. Senate candidate John Curtis and Attorney General candidate Derek Brown — submitted to qualify for the Republican primary were not close enough matches to voters’ signatures on file and should not have counted.
Lyman contends that means Cox fell short of the legal requirement, should not have been on the Republican primary ballot, and therefore he should be the GOP candidate on the general election ballot.
Auditors, however, said that Cox, Curtis and Brown complied with the legal requirements, and if the candidates had been told they were short signatures, they would have had ample time to gather whatever was needed. Auditors also found that some signatures that had been invalidated in fact should have been counted.
Lyman has filed five lawsuits trying to have Cox removed from the ballot, demanding access to Cox’s signatures and contesting other aspects of the primary election. None have been successful thus far.
On Thursday, he also said he isn’t convinced he lost the primary to Cox. Lyman said he was contacted by a ballot counter who told him Lyman was winning that county in a landslide but the final result was much closer.
“There was a statistical analysis done in Utah County, and they said there are problems there. There’s an algorithm clearly at play,” Lyman said. “These aren’t baseless allegations and are things that we have to address.”
Lyman offered no evidence for his “algorithm” claim beyond his anonymous source.
Weber County Clerk Ricky Hatch said it is “virtually impossible” an algorithm changed votes. All of the ballot scanning equipment is certified by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission and tested for up to 18 months before certification. The required accuracy rate is less than one error per 3 million ballots.
Scanners, software and hardware in Utah are given unique identification numbers to ensure they’re not changed. To prevent hacking, scanning equipment is never connected to the internet, Bluetooth or any wireless connection. Machines are kept locked with round-the-clock video surveillance.
Machines are sealed and the seals are numbered, logged and tracked so they can’t be physically compromised. Before ballots are counted, thousands of test ballots are run to ensure the counts are correct. The public can witness those audits.
After ballots are counted, another audit is conducted using a sample of ballots to ensure they were counted correctly.
To insert an algorithm, he said, someone would need unfettered physical access to the equipment or the code, or they’d have to have access to the software after the machines are certified and somehow not have the changes caught by either of the two audits.
Further, Hatch said, votes are not tallied until after polls close on election night, so saying Lyman was getting 85% of the vote while counting is going would be looking at only a small sample — and also sharing tabulations before polls close is illegal.
A poll released Thursday by Noble Predictive Insights, an independent pollster, showed Cox leading the gubernatorial race with 49% of the support among likely voters, Democrat Brian King with 23% and Lyman at 5%. Lyman told supporters at the rally he realizes Cox probably will win the race.
“It’s likely the governor will take office. He’ll be the governor for the next four years. It’s likely he will be, but the people will know he’s an illegitimate governor,” Lyman said. “That’s not a position you want.”
Update, Oct. 18, 3:30 p.m. • This story has been updated to include a statement from House Speaker Mike Schultz and from Weber County Clerk Ricky Hatch.
