After missteps by the Utah County Clerk’s office during the primary election — including a finding that more ballots were cast than the number of voters checked in — the lieutenant governor’s office says it will “continue to monitor compliance” there on Election Day.
And the state, which investigated and outlined required changes, will “take additional action, if needed,” said Utah Director of Elections Ryan Cowley in a statement.
At the same time, the Utah County attorney is conducting an investigation related to elected Clerk Aaron Davidson’s comments that he has tracked the ballots of some elected officials.
After she voted on Tuesday, Utah County Commissioner Amelia Powers Gardner reiterated her call for Davidson to recuse himself from the counting Tuesday night, due to “the way he’s been targeting elected officials,” she told The Salt Lake Tribune. Davidson has told FOX 13 News the commissioner’s demand is “ridiculous.”
As of 7 p.m., a spokesperson with the Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson’s office said staff at the Utah County Clerk’s office had been sending Henderson’s office updates throughout the day Tuesday.
He noted state election officials visited the clerk’s office earlier in the day and said “we continue to monitor the situation.” He did not immediately respond to subsequent questions late Tuesday about monitoring the clerk’s office.
The scrutiny over voting in Utah’s second-largest county came during one of the most recently contentious gubernatorial races for the state and hotly contested presidential races for the country.
(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) Voters at the polling station in the Utah County Health and Justice Building in Provo on Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024.
Utah County had fewer in-person voting locations open Tuesday, at 13, than Davis County, at 15, despite having twice the number of registered voters, Gardner noted. Of the mailed or dropped off ballots and early, in-person votes counted so far, Utah County has the lowest turnout statewide, at 43.8%, Henderson’s office said Tuesday morning.
And on Tuesday evening, Davidson’s office was working to print more than 2,000 emergency ballots after printers at Highland, Pleasant Grove, Payson and Orem polling locations ran out of ink.
Davidson, a Republican, was elected in 2022 to oversee elections for Utah County. He ran on a platform openly questioning the results of the 2020 presidential election and cast doubt on the security of ballots cast through the mail.
His office was investigated by Henderson, who oversees state elections, for irregularities this summer after the June 2024 primary, with the results released in a report in September.
(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) Utah County Clerk Aaron Davison oversees ballot counting at the Utah County Administration Building in Provo, Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024.
Her staff found that at Utah County polling places, reconciliation — which means ensuring there’s a match between the number of people who check in and the number of votes cast — “was not always conducted pursuant to state statute.” They also found “some employees were rejecting ballot signatures at significantly higher rates than others,” and that some of those signatures should have been accepted, the report said.
Before the report was released, Cowley’s Tuesday statement noted, elections staff met with Davidson’s team to explain their recommendations. “Since the review was released, staff in the Office of the Lieutenant Governor have made several visits to the clerk’s office to review the recommendations, provide training, and discuss actions taken to comply,” Cowley said, adding that the elections office “will continue to monitor compliance.”
In an unfounded claim, Davidson accused Henderson in a letter last month of breaking the law. He suggested she “did not handle the manual candidate signature verification process for statewide candidates according to statute.”
He has said he does not believe she and Gov. Spencer Cox legitimately qualified for the ballot through the signature-gathering route. And he called for Henderson to be penalized for that. His letter was shared in far-right circles, with several commenters calling for death penalty for Henderson or for her to be imprisoned. At least two people posted images of nooses.
(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) Voters at the American Fork Library in Utah County on Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024.
Davidson’s questions about the signature verification process, though, are unfounded. Multiple audits have been conducted, including on the packets of signatures submitted by Cox and Henderson, and have found those to be largely valid.
State Auditor John Dougall concluded it was “statistically likely” Cox’s campaign gathered enough signatures to be on the 2024 primary ballot. After a separate legislative audit, Senate President Stuart Adams and House Speaker Mike Schultz released a statement saying the audit confirmed that all of the candidates “fulfilled the requirements to qualify to be on the ballot.”
Davidson’s comments, too, on the security of mail-in ballots are likewise unsubstantiated. Voting by mail is widely recognized as secure by both election officials and experts, and is widely popular in Utah.
But this year, Davidson opted not to provide already-budgeted prepaid postage for this year’s primary election ballots. In the top right corner of Utah County ballots’ envelopes, where postage is usually included, a message read: “POSTAGE REQUIRED IF MAILED.”
The lieutenant governor criticized that decision, and she said that USPS would still deliver ballots without postage, and would later send a bill to the county.
Meanwhile, Utah County saw the lowest turnout in the state during the June primaries, with 43.6% participation among active, registered voters.
