Utah Certifies Primary Despite Claims Its All-Mail Voting System Disenfranchised Hundreds
Utah Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson certified the state’s recent primary election results on Monday amid allegations from electors that the state’s all-mail voting system disenfranchised their votes.
“Statewide and multicounty canvass is complete,” Henderson announced on X. “Much gratitude for the county clerks, poll workers, candidates, and voters who made it all happen.”
The Beehive State’s certification of its June 25 primary results did not come without controversy. In the weeks following the contest, it became clear that hundreds of ballots mailed by voters in Utah’s southern counties had not been counted due to what county officials believe was a postmark issue, despite voters’ purported adherence to state law.
Unlike most states, Utah employs an all-mail voting system in which voters on the Beehive State’s registration lists are automatically mailed a ballot ahead of Election Day. State law requires voters’ mail ballots to be “postmarked by the day before Election Day,” according to Ballotpedia.
While the aforementioned voters claimed to have mailed their ballots on or prior to the postmark deadline, their votes were not counted. As I previously wrote in these pages, the issue apparently stemmed from how the U.S. Postal Service processes mail for approximately nine southern Utah counties. According to St. George News, mail processing for the region “has shifted” from Provo, Utah, to Las Vegas, Nevada, “where it is scanned, barcoded, and postmarked.”
Local officials hypothesized that routing these counties’ mail to Las Vegas for processing produced a scenario in which ballots mailed before June 24 were postmarked after the deadline.
While it remains unknown how many ballots weren’t tabulated due to this specific issue, “nearly 1,200 ballots were not counted in five counties because they were not postmarked in time,” according to The Salt Lake Tribune.
The disenfranchisement of hundreds of voters could have potentially affected the outcome of one of Utah’s GOP congressional primaries. The state’s certified election results show Rep. Celeste Maloy beat challenger Colby Jenkins by 214 votes, a 0.2-point margin, in the race to become the Republican nominee for Utah’s 2nd Congressional District. According to Utah law, candidates who lose by a 0.25-point margin or less can request an official recount in the week following the state’s official canvass.
Jenkins campaign manager Greg Powers previously told The Federalist that Jenkins would request a recount at some point after the state certified the primary results. He also underscored how the postmark debacle brought to light the flaws with Utah’s all-mail voting system.
“With all-mail voting, we’re counting on the Post Office, and the Post Office is notoriously a giant federal government bureaucracy that’s not running efficiently,” Powers said. “We’ve turned our elections over to it, and now we see the consequences of that.”
A lawsuit filed on July 17 by Jenkins and several Utah voters that attempted to delay certification of the state’s primary results to ensure electors affected by the postmark issue could have their ballots counted was denied by an Obama-appointed judge last week.
Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He previously served as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood
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