Two men were caught trying to vote more than once in the primary race for county clerk at the Salt Lake County GOP Convention in Kearns Saturday, and the chairman of the party says it may take legal action against them.
“We’re going to probably send this to the attorney general, we may actually prosecute,” said Salt Lake County Republican Party Chairman Chris Null. “That’s a serious issue in our system.”
This happened during the vote counting in the GOP primary race for Salt Lake County clerk between Nancy Lord and Goud Maragani, which Maragani ended up winning with 69% of the delegate vote during the GOP convention.
That automatically advances him from this primary election to the general election in November as the GOP nominee.
“One person took two ballots and stuffed (them) into the container … he ran off,” said Null. “Another person attempted, and that person, we stopped it before he was able to accomplish it.”
The second man was then called up on stage where Null said he didn’t have a good explanation for why he allegedly did it.
“He claimed he didn’t do it but we had enough witnesses.”
Both men were then stripped of their delegate titles in a vote from the body of delegates. One of the men was a local precinct chairman.
Null was asked for his response to comments he made earlier in the meeting with delegates where he said the vote for county clerk would be by paper because it’s the “safest.”
“But look — we fixed it, right?” he said. “We were able to identify that that didn’t affect the outcome of the election. Paper ballots actually proved efficient here.”
As for what legal charges may come, that’s unclear since a political party is a private business.
Both Lord and Maragani were asked if they were OK with the vote continuing, as was the body of delegates. Once everyone agreed, the race continued to be counted.
There were 1,253 total credentialed delegates gathered in Kearns High School’s auditorium.
The process of that one nominating vote took more than an hour.