Utah voters stood in lines for a couple of hours after the polls closed Tuesday as counties had long lines and ballot printing issues. The Lieutenant Governor’s Office decided to tell clerks to not start releasing results until everyone in line had voted.
The polls closed at 8 p.m. in Utah, but the first returns were not posted online until a few minutes after 10 p.m.
“We wouldn’t do anything differently in terms of releasing results,” said Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson in a press conference Wednesday. “It’s an unfortunate delay, but an understandable one.” She said she wanted voters in line to be able to cast their ballots “without undue influence from results.”
Later, Henderson visited the Deseret News offices to talk more about Tuesday night’s elections, and what could be improved. The Deseret News also spoke with Ryan Cowley, director of elections, and two county clerks about what happened on election night.
Long lines in multiple counties
There were long lines in multiple counties, said Henderson, including Washington, Utah, Weber, Cache and Summit counties.
“County clerks are responsible for running their elections and they are responsible for determining how many and where in-person polling locations will be, where drop boxes will be,” she said, adding counties also need to be responsible for paper and toner.
As for where the long lines came from, Henderson said she didn’t think it was an abnormal amount of in-person voting. But she thought it came from a large amount of provisional same-day registration and provisional ballots.
Cowley said he estimates a provisional ballot takes around 10 minutes per voter to fill out. There’s a form and then also people need to provide proof of identification, proof of residency and poll workers need to make sure they give them the correct ballot.
It was these provisional ballots that Utah County Clerk Aaron Davidson said took the longest amount of time to process. But he also said there were more in-person voters than expected. Weber County Clerk Ricky Hatch said the same thing.
“People just procrastinate until the last day in Utah (which) allows same day registration,” said Davidson. “And that just took a tremendous amount of time and resources to accommodate the people that wait until the last day.”
These ballots have to be manually processed, he said. While they hadn’t finished counting the ballots as of this morning, Davidson said they received thousands of provisional ballots.
In addition to the time it takes to process provisional ballots, Davidson said the amount of people voting in person was unexpected.
“There’s probably some people that walked away from the long lines and I’m sorry about that, but it wasn’t anticipated,” he said. “There was nothing nefarious to try and push people away.”
Davidson said for the next presidential election, the county will need to plan better. The lesson he’s taking away from Tuesday night is there’s an appetite for voting in person. Even if he doesn’t get elected again, he said he plans on telling the next clerk to plan for more, especially during federal election years.
“I never had anybody that said that to me,” said Davidson. He praised his staff and said he was very proud of the way they were working.
Henderson said when her office sees issues, they take action, which is why the office sent a state plane to Arizona on Tuesday. The office did so after learning Utah County had gone through half of its stack of provisional ballot paper stock by mid-morning.
“We sent the state plane to Phoenix to pick up more because we didn’t know if they would need it or not,” she said. “We thought maybe they would and they hadn’t adequately prepared for even just a normal in-person turnout.”
Davidson said the decision to send the plane down was “a slight overreaction.”
“We had what we thought was enough ballots,” said Davidson and he added they also had a backup plan they executed where they cut more paper. “Nobody ran out of ballot paper, but we did have a problem with the printers.”
“We did have to print some emergency ballots, which, that’s the other backup plan,” he said. “So, our backup plans fully functioned.”
As for Weber County, Hatch said the lines started picking up on Election Day around 4 p.m. He thinks the worst waits were around two hours.
“The main causes for us were the number of checking stations that we have,” said Hatch. He also expected they would have around 5% of voters show up in person (normally they have around 2% but expected more for the presidential election). The percentage ended up being around 8%.
“That was probably the biggest cause,” he said, explaining the number of in-person voters they think they will have determines how they set up the process. Weber County also saw some technological delays that Hatch thinks slowed down the process for around 15 to 20 seconds per voter.
Similar to Utah County, Hatch said workers had printing issues and needed to send someone back to the office to get the right ink color. Other counties in the state had lines due to provisional ballots, but Hatch said he didn’t think Weber’s lines were because of those ballots.
Hatch also said there are multiple lines and understanding the difference between them would have been helpful.
When people say there was a long wait, he said he thinks they are generally referring to the check-in lines. “Just keep in mind there are others and we have to manage all of those.”
Cowley said he thought provisional voting, not unexpected numbers of in-person voters, were the main reason for the voter lines.
Henderson said she doesn’t want to excuse any lack of planning, but two-thirds of county clerks have never run a presidential election before. If the clerks had listened to the Lieutenant Governor’s Office, she said some of the problems could have been mitigated.
When asked if there were any compliance issues, Cowley said no. He said they did see a planning issue with the ballot paper, but they haven’t seen any compliance issues.
Who does what?
Both Henderson and Cowley emphasized county clerks have stewardship in elections and make decisions like how many polling locations are open.
“That’s a decision that’s made by the clerk,” said Cowley, explaining the clerks know how many resources they have and what kind of buildings are available as polling locations.
As for providing enough voting equipment, Cowley said that’s also the role of the county clerk. Funding for equipment comes from grant money and federal money that’s available to the clerks.
Counties have different needs, he said. “If we try to interject ourselves into those decisions ... we end up breaking the counties. And that’s where the county clerks come in because they know those their locations and staffing, availability, voting trends.” The office does provide resources to clerks.
As for whether or not the Lieutenant Governor’s Office has leverage to encourage more polling stations or other measures, Henderson said there needs to be some caution.
“I think we need to be very careful about leveraging state control too much,” she said. “Elections are administered locally and they should be.”
There are opportunities to provide guidance, Henderson said. And the office is looking at ways to mitigate issues in the future. But about county clerks, she said “these are also locally elected individuals who have responsibility to follow the law and to make sure they’re doing what they need to do to allow any eligible Utahn within their jurisdiction to be able to vote.”
Weber County clerk: Come see the process
Hatch said he thinks people who administer elections are good at logistical preparation and having backup plans, but maybe not the best messengers.
“We’re not good messengers, we’re not good at getting the message out and letting the public know what safeguards we have in place,” said Hatch.
Sometimes clerks are so focused on helping the voters right in front of them that attempts at messaging can be heard by voters as “trust me,” when Hatch said he’s never heard an election official say, “Oh, just trust me.”
He said he would love to have people take tours and learn more about the process so it can be made better.
“Come see the process,” said Hatch. “Come ask the questions. Come see how we do it because we’ve got great controls in place. We’re very careful with every ballot. We feel really confident about it, but don’t take our word for it. Come and see yourself.”