The 2024 elections here in Utah are over. The results are in. According to the media and most elected leaders, everything went great. We, as legislators, disagree.
Elections should be simple. Properly identified voters mark ballots, drop them in a closed box and later that night, election officials count and report them. There is no need for “Election Season,” followed by weeks of counting. We believe that complications designed to make things “smoother” for government workers, or to allow less-engaged citizens to vote with DoorDash-like ease, are misguided.
We believe two modern “improvements” have needlessly complicated our elections while reducing overall confidence in the process: SB54′s signature requirements and universal vote-by-mail (VBM).
“SB54″ remains to this day a solution in search of a problem for two reasons: First, we don’t believe that state government has the legal right to unilaterally dictate political party nominating procedures. Second, the signature gathering imposed by SB54 created an excessively cumbersome and costly nomination process, with plenty of room for error.
Universal VBM has several negatives, including ballot security. According to the MIT Election Data Science Lab, “As with all forms of voter fraud, documented instances of fraud related to VBM are rare. However, even many scholars who argue that fraud is generally rare agree that fraud with VBM voting seems to be more frequent than with in-person voting.”
They continue, “Two major features of VBM raise these concerns. First, the ballot is cast outside the public eye, and thus the opportunities for coercion and voter impersonation are greater. Second, the transmission path for VBM ballots is not as secure as traditional in-person ballots. These security concerns relate both to ballots being intercepted and ballots being requested without the voter’s permission.”
Manually validating signatures on both candidate petitions and VBM ballots relies upon fallible human judgement, and does so at huge and unnecessary cost. Signature verification and VBM both created problems this past cycle. In one case, a major candidate may — we emphasize may — have improperly advanced to the Republican primary for governor.
In a second instance, about 1,100 Washington County voters were disenfranchised because of confusion about U.S. Postal Service mail processing in St. George. When the voters sued, attorneys for the State of Utah argued, “The law is the law.” The fact that voters mistakenly believed they had done what was required to have their ballots postmarked on time did not matter, said the court. The letter of the law was all that mattered — their votes were disallowed.
Under SB54, candidates have two ways to qualify for a primary election: either gather the legally-required number of valid voter signatures, or win the support of at least 40% of delegates at a party’s nominating convention. Those who fail at both are eliminated from the primary elections. Remember, “the law is the law.”
Which brings us to our biggest controversy this election cycle. While Gov. Spencer Cox’s campaign gathered some 32,000 total signatures, it appears that they fell short of the 28,000 valid signatures required by Utah law. (Cox did not win the 40% Republican delegate support needed at convention.)
A Utah State Legislative Auditor General Report estimated that Cox may have lacked as many as 900 valid signatures. The Deseret News reported, “Even if each of Cox’s extra 492 signatures was valid, the incumbent governor likely would have fallen short of the valid signature requirement with his initial submission of signature packets.”
If true, then under SB54, Cox failed to qualify for the primary ballot. Cox supporters and others argued that any signature shortfall was caused by error on the part of elections officials and could have been easily remedied. That may be, but as the 1,100 unfortunate southern Utah voters learned when their votes were thrown out by a court, “the law is the law.”
Phil Lyman did not gather signatures, but did win 67% support from State Republican Convention delegates. Under the Utah GOP’s own rules, that made Lyman the Republican party’s official nominee for governor.
Only SB54 and its signature provision put Cox on the primary ballot. If, indeed, the governor was short of signatures, “why” doesn’t matter. Ask those 1,100 voters. And if the governor really did fail to qualify for the Republican primary, one could argue that he should have been the “write-in” candidate in November, rather than Lyman.
That said, we are not taking a position on one particular race. The courts have ruled as they ruled. But as lawmakers, updating Utah’s election laws is very much within our purview. Dependence on error-prone human judgment in our election processes is an invitation to error, to fraud and more importantly, to a loss of faith in our election system.
In the long run, the mere perception of error, unfairness or fraud in our elections can be as damaging as actual fraud. The Utah legislature must pass serious reforms to both VBM and SB54 to remove human fallibility from elections. We have given both about 10 years to prove themselves, and they have — just not the way their authors envisioned. Elections can be, and should be, made simple again.
Rep. Mike Peterson
Rep. Tim Jimenez
Rep. Trevor Lee
Rep. Mike Kohler
Representative-elect Nicholeen Peck
Rep. Judy Weeks Rohner
Rep. Rex Shipp