Early voting is underway in Utah, and Election Day is nearly here. It is, perhaps, time to think about the many public servants — from the lieutenant governor to your neighborhood’s volunteer poll workers — who are working hard to make democracy work.
America is increasingly threatened by would-be leaders and unruly mobs who only have faith in the system when their candidate wins. That’s not democracy.
Absent any substantial evidence that results have been fixed, it is the responsibility of all patriotic Americans to respect the system, play by its rules and have faith that even if your candidate didn’t get elected this year, our laws and traditions will preserve democracy into the future.
Gratitude for what our election workers do is always in order. More so in these dark times, when so many lies and threats are abroad in the land. Public-spirited employees and volunteers are being hit with totally false accusations of fixing election results.
Those charges are all false. In a few cases, the victims of them have rightfully struck back with lawsuits that have hit serial conspiracy theorists with multi-million dollar defamation judgements.
Former New York City Mayor and Donald Trump booster Rudy Giuliani now owes two Georgia election workers $148 million for spreading lies about their conduct in the 2020 election. Fox News paid $787 million to Dominion Voting Systems for its relentless falsehoods about the security of that company’s election systems.
Still we hear reports that various right-wing wackos, some of them armed, are threatening to “patrol” polling places, on the lookout for those imaginary busloads of non-citizens who are supposedly being imported to vote for someone other than MAGA Republicans.
Even when those buses don’t appear, don’t think that anyone who looks vaguely Hispanic, or just kind of brown, won’t get a suspicious stare from one of these self-appointed election vigilantes.
One person frightened away from exercising his or her right to vote is too many. That, not fantasy fears of widespread election irregularities, is what all voters should be on the lookout for.
In Utah, the person in overall charge of running elections is Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson. Through no fault of her own, Henderson has watched as what used to be a straightforward function of government has become a high-risk endeavor.
Our lieutenant governor was one of many states’ election officials who were the target of packages of suspicious white powder. Phil Lyman, the sore-loser write-in candidate for governor, is kicking off social media threads baselessly accusing Henderson of wrongdoing and watching as some members of his online mob suggest that she should be executed.
And, while most local election officials go diligently about their duties, Utah County Clerk Aaron Davidson joins the lunatic fringe by suggesting Henderson be prosecuted for imagined malfeasance.
Henderson has kept her head and has had the fortitude to call out members of her own Republican Party for feeding baseless conspiracy theories. She has rightly not taken a side in this year’s presidential election, even as her boss, Gov. Spencer Cox, cravenly capitulated to become a supporter of Donald Trump.
In Utah, 17 out of the state’s 29 county clerks have left office since 2020, and state officials report a high rate of turnover among all election posts.
The Brennen Center for Justice reports that some 20% of local election officials across the United States either quit since the 2020 election or were looking to resign before this year’s polling. One in five is worried about being assaulted on the job, and 45% of them expressed concern about the safety of other election workers.
We know that Trump has predicted violence if he loses. Any doubt of that was resolved on Jan. 6, 2021, and the threats have only grown since then.
Standing in the way of this potentially violent anti-democratic movement are state and local election workers, most of them armed with nothing more than computer print-outs and sheets of “I Voted” stickers.
They are the soul of our democracy, and all of us owe them our thanks.
You can still cast your ballots.
Any Utah voters who haven’t already sent in their mail ballots have until Monday to get them postmarked. Be aware that, in some rural areas and small towns, mail may not be postmarked on the same day it was dropped in a box.
A safer option would be to use many of the official ballot drop boxes that are found around the state — 28 of them in Salt Lake County alone — or to bring them to any of the may early voting stations or traditional Election Day polling places.
You can still vote the old fashioned way at the early voting stations or Election Day polling places. You will need ID.
Utah provides an online way to track your ballot to make sure it was delivered and counted.
It’s a lot of work putting on an election. Don’t fail to do your small part.
Vote.
Note on editorial endorsements.
As a 501(c)3 nonprofit, The Salt Lake Tribune is prohibited from endorsing specific candidates for public office and we have not endorsed any candidate for national, state or local office in 2024. We may take positions on ballot issues and amendments, and we did last week.
The Tribune Editorial Board believes every Utah community deserves access to independent and trusted news and information. And that Utahns can and will make their own informed decisions, which is why all of our voter guides published across the state are available online to every Utahn free of charge. You can find those at sltrib.com/politics/voterguides.
— The Salt Lake Tribune Editorial Board
