Utah LG says attacks on the election system are a threat to liberty

Utah Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson, the state’s chief election officer, urged voters to become more familiar with the election process before believing claims of electoral fraud, during remarks on Thursday.
A growing climate of distrust toward election officials threatens the safety of poll workers and the peaceful functioning of democracy, Henderson said in a speech at the Hinckley Institute of Politics at the University of Utah.
A letter containing white powder was intercepted by the FBI en route to Henderson’s office two weeks ago. Similar packages delivered to election offices across the country were all signed “United States Traitor Elimination Army.”
“Attacks on our elections and the people who run them are attacks on the political institutions that exist to protect our liberty and free government,” Henderson said during her prepared remarks.
As part of her “stewardship” of Utah’s elections, Henderson attempted to address concerns about how elections are run and to distinguish between honest questions and politically motivated attacks on the election process.
Accusations of widespread corruption among state and county election officials, as well as volunteers, “are not designed to improve processes or laws,” Henderson said, “but to subvert them; to instill fear and doubt, harass and intimidate, cause confusion, delay and chaos. And they always serve to advance a political agenda, not the public interest.”
The 2024 primary season exposed weaknesses in some facets of Utah election law. A historically close outcome in the 2nd Congressional District shined a bright light on the difficulty of relying on the U.S. Postal Service to postmark late-breaking ballots in time to be counted.
Henderson recommended placing mail-in ballots in election drop boxes instead of the mail box. If a voter has no other choice than to use the mail box, Henderson said they are responsible for doing it early enough to eliminate any risk of a late postmark.
Iron County Commissioner Paul Cozzens refused to certify the county’s election results after evidence emerged that up to 400 people had their ballots thrown out because the postal service marked the ballots after the deadline one day before Election Day.
In an interview with the Deseret News, Cozzens said there was not widespread voter fraud in Iron County, but he insists reforms are needed. Efforts to expose pitfalls in the election system are not attempts to change election outcomes, Cozzens said, they are attempts “to encourage a better election process.”
“I think we have major election problems in Utah and it stems from mail-in ballots,” Cozzens said. “We have voters that did their due diligence, they abided by every law they were told to abide by, and their vote was cast out, and that’s not right.”
Cozzens would prefer an opt-in system for mail-in voting, with the majority of voters returning to same-day, in-person, paper-ballot voting. Cozzens has high confidence in Iron County election workers and said voters should consider their county clerks a good source for election information.
Cozzens also invited voters to take advantage of their legal right to watch election proceedings in county clerks offices. It is not that Utah’s election system needs to be thrown out, Cozzens said, there are just important problems the Legislature needs to address before the next election cycle.
Other concerns also emerged during the primary election about the process of remedying ballots with improperly marked signatures as well as the transparency of voter information on ballot cure lists and primary signature-qualification packets.
Before this year’s primary, Sutherland Institute, a conservative think tank, released a poll that found over 70% of Utahns have confidence that the state’s decade-old vote-by-mail system counts ballots accurately, produces fair outcomes and is secure.
The same percentage of Republicans said they like how vote-by-mail allows them to avoid lines at polling places but around half of Republicans are worried about mail-in ballots being hard to track or being sent to the wrong home.
While small mistakes will be made in every election, and there is room for improvement in state code, the work of “election vigilantes” scrutinizing election results and deeming them inaccurate does more harm than good and often arrives at “demonstrably false” conclusions, Henderson said.
Henderson praised those who take time out of their day to observe the ballot-counting process for providing a “good public service.” It is important for election workers to know that their work is being watched, even if that sometimes makes their work less convenient, Henderson said.
“The questioning, the raising alarms, the pointing out problems, is all a very important part of our process,” Henderson said.
But public oversight “crosses the line,” according to Henderson, when it attempts to work around the process, or when it attempts to paint the entire Utah election system as corrupt. Henderson worries that lies, rumors and part truths are gaining more traction than the often “boring” truth about how elections really function.
“We don’t score political points by speaking truth in elections in my party, and that’s hard,” Henderson told reporters following her remarks. “I would love to see more elected officials step up in defense of our system, because it’s not politically popular to do so in our state. It’s politically popular to say all of the buzzwords or say nothing. And I need them to start saying things to instill confidence, not to sow doubt.”
Henderson aimed to set the record straight, claiming that vote-by-mail is more secure than in-person voting, and that machine tabulation is more accurate than hand-counting ballots. Henderson reminded voters that the safeguards associated with mail-in ballots can sometimes mean waiting several days before results are finalized. But the tabulation process, and subsequent audits, are open to the public, Henderson said.
“Utah elections are secure and administered fairly,” Henderson said in her speech. “County clerks are meticulous in their efforts to accurately count all legal ballots, whether they are cast by mail or in person. Not long ago, county clerks and the good local people who ran elections faithfully performed their duties in near anonymity. But today, harassment, intimidation, and threats to election officials are so commonplace that they have become almost unremarkable. This trend should alarm everyone.”
Henderson called on Utahns to “doubt the doubters before you doubt the entire election system;” “commit today to accept the results of the election, no matter what they are;” and to “take your vote into your own hands” by updating your voter registration and signing up for notifications as your ballots proceeds through the tabulation process.
Henderson recognized that other Republicans might not like looking to government as the “authoritative source” on elections, but she encouraged Utahns to reach out to their county clerks, who are members of the community elected to conduct every election.
Voters can contact their county clerk here. Other voter information can be found at vote.utah.gov. Voters can check the status of their voter registration here. Voters can find information about dropbox and voting locations here. Voters can track their ballot here. Voters can learn about candidates here.
Deseret News political coverage can be found here.