A state legislative committee declined to hear complaints about the Utah Republican Party’s caucus-night presidential poll for the second time on Wednesday, citing biased presentations, the independence of party organizations and an alleged conflict of interest with the committee chair.
Sen. Daniel Thatcher, R-West Valley City, who is chair of the bicameral Government Operations Interim Committee, intended to have the committee listen to critics of the state GOP’s decision to combine the primary nomination process with the neighborhood caucus system.
Scheduled to speak were Integrity Matters founder, and former Utah County GOP vice chair, Daryl Acumen; a representative of the nonpartisan Disability Law Center; Weber County Clerk-Auditor Ricky Hatch; a representative of both major political parties in Utah; and Sen. Curt Bramble, R-Provo, who sponsored legislation in 2019 guaranteeing the option of government-run, vote-by-mail primaries on Super Tuesday,
All 12 of Thatcher’s fellow committee members voted to remove the item from the agenda on Wednesday, less than two months after the same presentations were canceled out of a worry that GOP chair Rob Axson lacked sufficient time to prepare for the hearing, Thatcher said.
This time, lawmakers, including Rep. Stephanie Gricius, R-Salt Lake City, Rep. Mike Petersen, R-North Logan, and Rep. Kay Christofferson, R-Lehi, argued the presentation materials from one critic — Daryl Acumen, a former GOP vice chair in Utah County — were biased against the caucus system.
“This is a conversation that does need to happen, but not in this way,” Gricius said. “We need to come at it from a clean slate.”
What happened in Utah’s Republican presidential preference poll?
The state GOP’s “presidential preference poll,” held on Super Tuesday, March 5, was criticized by lawmakers and voters for being inaccessible and insecure. Website crashes and disorganization contributed to a low turnout of less than 10% and the disenfranchisement of Utah voters who were unable to attend the caucus proceedings at schools across the state, according to Acumen.
In the days leading up to the caucus, Acumen was behind a mass text sent to 162,000 Utah Republicans declaring that “Utah’s primary election (was) canceled” and asking voters to email, text and call Axson to voice their opposition. Following the election, Acumen sent out a text surveying GOP voters about their experience with the caucus and, again, directed their comments to Axson.
Acumen had planned to share a summary, and some specific examples, of the 11,700 responses he received, compiled into a 338-page binder. Acumen had also planned to share the results of his informal text survey of Utah Republicans. He said the results showed roughly 73% of GOP voters were upset about the way the party chose to participate in the country’s presidential candidate nomination.
“Everyone’s mad across every demographic,” Acumen said.
What will the Utah Republican Party do differently?
Regardless of public opinion, the presidential preference poll falls outside the purview of state legislative action because it was a private party process, not a state-funded election, Axson said: “The jurisdiction is the issue.” The poll represented a non-binding indication of how Utah’s national delegates would vote at July’s Republican National Convention, Axson told the Deseret News.
But the party has attempted to learn from its mistakes that night, Axson insisted. Increasing the number of venue locations is an actionable step that will be taken in the future, Axson said, while claiming the technological failures during the preference poll were the result of a “denial-of-service” cyber attack, not the number of simultaneous users.
Members of the committee, including Gricius and Petersen, implied Thatcher wanted to elevate Acumen’s criticisms because his sister works at Integrity Matters LLC. Thatcher called the accusation irrelevant — every lawmakers’ siblings have jobs, he said — and a personal attack on his integrity.
“What we heard here today in this committee, loud and clear, is that they don’t feel like they have any responsibility or obligation to hear from these people,” Thatcher told the Deseret News following the vote. “This is literally the committee that oversees elections for the state of Utah. So if concerns and questions and complaints about elections in the state of Utah are not to be heard in that legislative committee, then where is the appropriate place?”