Here’s how to cast a write-in vote in Utah, and how election officials will count them

Every other Thursday this voting season, Rozan Mitchell has led a 45-minute training session on election standards from her home office.

In one recent session, Mitchell, who has worked as an elections official in Utah for nearly three decades, covered ballot adjudication, the process of resolving flagged ballots — including write-in ballots.

Mitchell said she has told election staff in Utah’s 29 counties that they should treat this election cycle like any other — even with a well-publicized write-in candidate running in Utah’s biggest statewide race: For governor.

“This year’s not any different,” Mitchell said. “There might be more attention put on [write-in ballots] this year, but the training is the same.”

Election officials across Utah are expecting more write-in votes than usual — thanks in part to a write-in campaign by Republican state Rep. Phil Lyman, who is trying to unseat fellow Republican Spencer J. Cox, the incumbent.

Officials in the office of Utah’s lieutenant governor, which oversees elections statewide, say they’re ready.

How to cast a write-in vote

Under the state’s election law — Utah Code 20A-3a-206, specifically — all ballots must contain a blank write-in section for all “valid” candidates. Valid write-ins, according to Utah Code 20A-9-601, are those who declare their candidacy at least 65 days before Election Day.

Voters should keep these rules in mind when casting a write-in vote:

• Voters cannot use a candidate sticker or label to cast their choice in the write-in space.

• All write-in votes supersede the choice of a printed ballot name. If a voter fills in the bubble for a printed name and also writes a separate candidate name in the allotted write-in space, the write-in vote will take precedence.

• Write-in votes only count if the written person’s name has registered as a write-in candidate.

Mitchell — who started working elections as a temp in the late ‘90s, served as elections director for Salt Lake and Utah counties, and now runs training sessions for the lieutenant governor’s office — said that in every election, a few Utahns write in odd names. Mickey Mouse is a popular choice, she said. Those votes are dismissed as invalid.

Sen. Mitt Romney said in 2018 that he protested Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential candidacy by writing in the name of his wife, Ann, even though he knew his vote “wasn’t going to go anywhere.”

Utah is among 48 states that have “voter intent” laws or policies that grant license to election officials, in line with election codes, to interpret a voter’s write-in choice, according to the think tank Movement Advancement Project.

Each ballot goes through a machine scanner, which is specially designed to tabulate valid votes, said Shelly Jackson, Utah’s deputy director of elections. But if the machine registers any errors, a two-person team of ballot adjudicators will step in to determine voter intent. Election officials must also “separate, count, and tabulate any ballots containing valid write-in votes,” according to Election Code 20A-4-104.

“There aren’t usually any big surprises or tough calls,” said Gabriel Woytek, lead elections administrator for Grand County, about their process. “It’s usually pretty straightforward, 99.9% of the time.”

Unlike signature verification, poll workers cannot reach back out to the voter to determine their intent, Jackson added, as ballots have become separated from their original envelope to ensure the voter’s anonymity.

But “if like minds cannot agree” on the voter’s intent, Jackson said, election staff will record that vote as invalid.

Jackson, who has worked at the county level for “many years,” said she has never seen a case “where someone could just not make out the word at all.”

Mitchell agreed. “People that write in a candidate … know who they want to write in,” she said.

‘All hands on deck’

During election training, Mitchell said she forgoes using actual candidate names, instead applying real-world candidate situations to fictional characters. This year, Mitchell chose “Harry Potter” and “James Potter” as opposing candidates in her write-in scenario.

According to Mitchell, writing in just “Potter” would not count for either candidate. But a write-in for “Harry” or “James,” or even their running mates, would count.

The Potter test may be helpful in this year’s governor’s race. In addition to Phil Lyman, a similarly named candidate — Richard Kennedy Lyman — has registered as a write-in candidate for governor. According to KSL, Richard Lyman’s mother, Carol Lyman, denied accusations Phil Lyman made on social media that the Cox campaign recruited and paid Richard Lyman. (There is also a third write-in candidate registered in the governor’s race: Charlie Tautuaa.)

While Mitchell admitted this year’s governor’s race is “more high profile,” she said she doesn’t spend much time playing the “what if” game when considering elections.

“If we focus on all of those ‘what ifs,’ … we would make ourselves crazy,” Mitchell said. “Let’s go with the 99.5% who are going to vote the way that they’re supposed to.”

At the county level, staff have been equipped with multi-hour training sessions and a poll worker handbook in preparation for Election Day.

Salt Lake County’s election office, for example, is hiring more than 100 extra poll workers to help during election season, according to the company’s job listings.

Other offices, like those in Washington and Grand counties, said they will make do with current staff numbers.

Officials in Washington County, which is home to nearly 112,000 registered voters and has borne witness to heated partisan talk this cycle, declined to disclose how many poll workers they are hiring this election, citing security concerns.

Grand County, which serves 6,500 active voters, has five people on staff, with three or four employees from other county departments available on an “on-call basis” on Election Day, Woytek said.

While these southern counties may see an uptick in write-in votes, considering Phil Lyman’s roots in that part of the state, officials in both counties said they are prepared to keep up with ballot numbers, even if that includes “longer hours” on Election Day.

“We’re pretty well equipped with our all-hands-on-deck approach,” Woytek said.

Yet, tallying write-in ballots “was going to be easy,” said Ryan Sullivan, Washington County’s clerk, if candidates didn’t share the same last name.

In Salt Lake County, the team consists of election veterans and newcomers. While supervisor oversight and thorough on-the-job training prepare staff, Nikila Venugopal, the county’s chief deputy clerk, said “nobody is ever alone in ballot processing.”

“That is kind of the name of the game in elections – accountability and just having a check on every process,” she said.

Running as a write-in

Phil Lyman’s run for governor may be Utah’s most prominent write-in campaign this cycle, but his is not the only one.

On Millerberg Drive in Sandy, “Write in Kris” signs are perched on nearly every lawn.

Kristine “Kris” Millerberg” has lived in this area for more than 40 years, and has taught school for more than 30 of those. Now, she’s running a write-in campaign for a seat on the Canyons School District’s board, representing District 1 — the seat held by her husband, Mont Millerberg, for more than 16 years.

After Mont Millerberg’s sudden death in February, Kris Millerberg said she is determined to continue her husband’s legacy with the district.

Mont Millerberg’s colleagues on the board voted unanimously to have Kris Millerberg temporarily serve the rest of his term. But when the Millerberg family went to register Kris as a candidate on the 2024 ballot, the family was told — after some back and forth with state and Salt Lake County election officials — that the deadline had passed.

The Legislature, in 2022, moved the deadline to declare one’s candidacy in nonpartisan races, such as school boards, from March to early January.

Voters in District 1 will find the names of two Midvale residents — Jackson Lewis and Rainer Lilbok — on the ballot. Kris Millerberg has registered as a write-in candidate.

Lewis, who’s 19 and a Hillcrest High graduate, said “the Millerberg name carries,” even as a write-in. He called the Millerberg family “a political dynasty.”

Yet, going from facing an “established incumbent” to a write-in, he added, makes his campaign strategy less “intense.”

“To me, I have to run a different campaign,” Lewis said.

Millenberg said that winning the seat outright as a write-in candidate is a long shot.

“Write-ins are near-on impossible,” Millerberg said. “It’s taken a ton of emotional work to make [this campaign] happen.”

How legible does handwriting need to be?

“Handwriting can be an issue,” acknowledged Shelly Jackson in the lieutenant governor’s office, “[but] it doesn’t come up that often.”

For the past decade, the Utah Common Core curriculum focused on keyboard skills – only recently making a comeback to cursive writing. But G. Matthew Throckmorton, a forensic document examiner with more than 28 years of experience, said he doesn’t believe handwriting quality has become an issue in today’s digital age.

“It is a fact that there are probably more people using computers and digital media,” Throckmorton said. “But we’re still writing and signing our name regularly on various different types of documents. … I don’t think there’s been any sort of degradation in how people write.”

Jackson has noticed a similar trend – while voter signatures have gotten worse, write-in handwriting is “almost easier to read,” as most voters write their choice in print.

Throckmorton is concerned, however, that election officials may not have enough training to determine valid write-in votes.

A layperson, he said, has a “50% chance of being right or wrong” when reading another person’s signature.

“It’s basically the flip of a coin,” he said.

On the other hand, Throckmorton said, it’s not feasible to spend hours poring over a single write-in on Election Day.

“I don’t know what the solution is, to have a better situation for ballots,” he said. “All I know is that any examination that’s being done by probably 99% of these folks is not scientific.”

Mitchell, the election veteran, said a forensic document examiner led a training earlier this year on signature fraud. However, she said that training did not relate to ballot adjudication.